ON HEROES,
HERO-WORSHIP, AND
THE HEROIC IN HISTORY
By
Thomas Carlyle
A PENN STATE ELECTRONIC CLASSICS SERIES PUBLICATION
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Contents
LECTURES ON HEROES ............................................................................................................... 4
THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY. .............. 4
LECTURE II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET: ISLAM. .............................................. 38
LECTURE III. THE HERO AS POET. DANTE: SHAKSPEARE. .............................................. 68
LECTURE IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM. 99
LECTURE V.THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS. ........ 131
LECTURE VI.THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON: MODERN
REVOLUTIONISM. ................................................................................................................ 165
Index .............................................................................................................................................. 206
Thomas Carlyle
The text is taken from the printed “Sterling Edition” of
Carlyle’s Complete Works, in 20 volumes, with the following
modifications: The footnote (there is only one) has been
embedded directly into text, in brackets, [thusly]. Greek text
has been transliterated into Latin characters with the notation
[Gr.] juxtaposed. Otherwise, the punctuation and spelling of
the print version have been retained.
ON HEROES,
HERO-WORSHIP,
AND
THE HEROIC IN
HISTORY
LECTURES ON HEROES
[May 5, 1840.]
LECTURE I
THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY.
By
W
E HAVE UNDERTAKEN to discourse here for a little
Thomas Carlyle
on Great Men, their manner of appearance in
our world’s business, how they have shaped
themselves in the world’s history, what ideas men formed of
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On Heroes
them, what work they did;—on Heroes, namely, and on their
reception and performance; what I call Hero-worship and the
Heroic in human affairs. Too evidently this is a large topic;
deserving quite other treatment than we can expect to give it
at present. A large topic; indeed, an illimitable one; wide as
Universal History itself. For, as I take it, Universal History,
the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at
bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.
They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers,
near. The light which enlightens, which has enlightened the
darkness of the world; and this not as a kindled lamp only,
but rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven;
a flowing light-fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of
manhood and heroic nobleness;—in whose radiance all souls
feel that it is well with them. On any terms whatsoever, you
will not grudge to wander in such neighborhood for a while.
These Six classes of Heroes, chosen out of widely distant countries and epochs, and in mere external figure differing alto-
patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that
we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the
outer material result, the practical realization and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the
world: the soul of the whole world’s history, it may justly be
considered, were the history of these. Too clearly it is a topic
we shall do no justice to in this place!
One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are
profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly,
upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He is
the living light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be
gether, ought, if we look faithfully at them, to illustrate several things for us. Could we see them well, we should get
some glimpses into the very marrow of the world’s history.
How happy, could I but, in any measure, in such times as
these, make manifest to you the meanings of Heroism; the
divine relation (for I may well call it such) which in all times
unites a Great Man to other men; and thus, as it were, not
exhaust my subject, but so much as break ground on it! At all
events, I must make the attempt.
It is well said, in every sense, that a man’s religion is the
chief fact with regard to him. A man’s, or a nation of men’s.
By religion I do not mean here the church-creed which he
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Thomas Carlyle
professes, the articles of faith which he will sign and, in words
or otherwise, assert; not this wholly, in many cases not this at
all. We see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under each or any
of them.This is not what I call religion, this profession and
assertion; which is often only a profession and assertion from
the outworks of the man, from the mere argumentative region of him, if even so deep as that. But the thing a man does
practically believe (and this is often enough without asserting
tion of this Mystery of Life, and for chief recognized element
therein Physical Force? Was it Christianism; faith in an Invisible, not as real only, but as the only reality; Time, through
every meanest moment of it, resting on Eternity; Pagan empire of Force displaced by a nobler supremacy, that of Holiness? Was it Scepticism, uncertainty and inquiry whether there
was an Unseen World, any Mystery of Life except a mad
one;—doubt as to all this, or perhaps unbelief and flat denial?
Answering of this question is giving us the soul of the history
it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does
practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his
vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and
destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him,
and creatively determines all the rest. That is his religion; or, it
may be, his mere scepticism and no-religion: the manner it is
in which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or No-World; and I say, if you tell me what that
is, you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what the
kind of things he will do is. Of a man or of a nation we
inquire, therefore, first of all, What religion they had? Was it
Heathenism,—plurality of gods, mere sensuous representa-
of the man or nation. The thoughts they had were the parents
of the actions they did; their feelings were parents of their
thoughts: it was the unseen and spiritual in them that determined the outward and actual;—their religion, as I say, was
the great fact about them. In these Discourses, limited as we
are, it will be good to direct our survey chiefly to that religious phasis of the matter. That once known well, all is known.
We have chosen as the first Hero in our series Odin the central figure of Scandinavian Paganism; an emblem to us of a
most extensive province of things. Let us look for a little at
the Hero as Divinity, the oldest primary form of Heroism.
Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this Paganism;
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On Heroes
almost inconceivable to us in these days. A bewildering, inextricable jungle of delusions, confusions, falsehoods, and absurdities, covering the whole field of Life! A thing that fills us
with astonishment, almost, if it were possible, with incredulity,—for truly it is not easy to understand that sane men
could ever calmly, with their eyes open, believe and live by
such a set of doctrines. That men should have worshipped
their poor fellow-man as a God, and not him only, but stocks
and stones, and all manner of animate and inanimate objects;
suade other men, not worthy of the name of sane, to believe
it! It will be often our duty to protest against this sort of
hypothesis about men’s doings and history; and I here, on the
very threshold, protest against it in reference to Paganism,
and to all other isms by which man has ever for a length of
time striven to walk in this world. They have all had a truth
in them, or men would not have taken them up. Quackery
and dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more
advanced decaying stages of religions, they have fearfully
and fashioned for themselves such a distracted chaos of hallucinations by way of Theory of the Universe: all this looks like
an incredible fable. Nevertheless it is a clear fact that they did
it. Such hideous inextricable jungle of misworships, misbeliefs, men, made as we are, did actually hold by, and live at
home in. This is strange. Yes, we may pause in sorrow and
silence over the depths of darkness that are in man; if we rejoice in the heights of purer vision he has attained to. Such
things were and are in man; in all men; in us too.
Some speculators have a short way of accounting for the
Pagan religion: mere quackery, priestcraft, and dupery, say they;
no sane man ever did believe it,—merely contrived to per-
abounded: but quackery was never the originating influence
in such things; it was not the health and life of such things,
but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to
die! Let us never forget this. It seems to me a most mournful
hypothesis, that of quackery giving birth to any faith even in
savage men. Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to
all things. We shall not see into the true heart of anything, if
we look merely at the quackeries of it; if we do not reject the
quackeries altogether; as mere diseases, corruptions, with which
our and all men’s sole duty is to have done with them, to
sweep them out of our thoughts as out of our practice. Man
everywhere is the born enemy of lies. I find Grand Lamaism
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Thomas Carlyle
itself to have a kind of truth in it. Read the candid, clearsighted, rather sceptical Mr. Turner’s Account of his Embassy
to that country, and see.
They have their belief, these poor Thibet people, that Providence sends down always an Incarnation of Himself into every generation. At bottom some belief in a kind of Pope! At
bottom still better, belief that there is a Greatest Man; that he
is discoverable; that, once discovered, we ought to treat him
with an obedience which knows no bounds! This is the truth
ism could have been?
Another theory, somewhat more respectable, attributes such
things to Allegory. It was a play of poetic minds, say these
theorists; a shadowing forth, in allegorical fable, in personification and visual form, of what such poetic minds had known
and felt of this Universe. Which agrees, add they, with a primary law of human nature, still everywhere observably at
work, though in less important things, That what a man feels
intensely, he struggles to speak out of him, to see represented
of Grand Lamaism; the “discoverability” is the only error here.
The Thibet priests have methods of their own of discovering
what Man is Greatest, fit to be supreme over them. Bad methods: but are they so much worse than our methods,—of understanding him to be always the eldest-born of a certain genealogy? Alas, it is a difficult thing to find good methods
for!—We shall begin to have a chance of understanding Paganism, when we first admit that to its followers it was, at
one time, earnestly true. Let us consider it very certain that
men did believe in Paganism; men with open eyes, sound
senses, men made altogether like ourselves; that we, had we
been there, should have believed in it. Ask now, What Pagan-
before him in visual shape, and as if with a kind of life and
historical reality in it. Now doubtless there is such a law, and
it is one of the deepest in human nature; neither need we
doubt that it did operate fundamentally in this business. The
hypothesis which ascribes Paganism wholly or mostly to this
agency, I call a little more respectable; but I cannot yet call it
the true hypothesis. Think, would we believe, and take with
us as our life-guidance, an allegory, a poetic sport? Not sport
but earnest is what we should require. It is a most earnest
thing to be alive in this world; to die is not sport for a man.
Man’s life never was a sport to him; it was a stern reality,
altogether a serious matter to be alive!
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On Heroes
I find, therefore, that though these Allegory theorists are on
the way towards truth in this matter, they have not reached it
either. Pagan Religion is indeed an Allegory, a Symbol of what
men felt and knew about the Universe; and all Religions are
symbols of that, altering always as that alters: but it seems to
me a radical perversion, and even inversion, of the business,
to put that forward as the origin and moving cause, when it
was rather the result and termination. To get beautiful allegories, a perfect poetic symbol, was not the want of men; but to
Bunyan’s nor in any other case. For Paganism, therefore, we
have still to inquire, Whence came that scientific certainty,
the parent of such a bewildered heap of allegories, errors and
confusions? How was it, what was it?
Surely it were a foolish attempt to pretend “explaining,” in
this place, or in any place, such a phenomenon as that fardistant distracted cloudy imbroglio of Paganism,—more like
a cloud-field than a distant continent of firm land and facts!
It is no longer a reality, yet it was one. We ought to under-
know what they were to believe about this Universe, what
course they were to steer in it; what, in this mysterious Life of
theirs, they had to hope and to fear, to do and to forbear
doing. The Pilgrim’s Progress is an Allegory, and a beautiful,
just and serious one: but consider whether Bunyan’s Allegory
could have preceded the Faith it symbolizes! The Faith had to
be already there, standing believed by everybody;—of which
the Allegory could then become a shadow; and, with all its
seriousness, we may say a sportful shadow, a mere play of the
Fancy, in comparison with that awful Fact and scientific certainty which it poetically strives to emblem. The Allegory is
the product of the certainty, not the producer of it; not in
stand that this seeming cloud-field was once a reality; that
not poetic allegory, least of all that dupery and deception was
the origin of it. Men, I say, never did believe idle songs, never
risked their soul’s life on allegories: men in all times, especially in early earnest times, have had an instinct for detecting
quacks, for detesting quacks. Let us try if, leaving out both
the quack theory and the allegory one, and listening with affectionate attention to that far-off confused rumor of the
Pagan ages, we cannot ascertain so much as this at least, That
there was a kind of fact at the heart of them; that they too
were not mendacious and distracted, but in their own poor
way true and sane!
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Thomas Carlyle
You remember that fancy of Plato’s, of a man who had
grown to maturity in some dark distance, and was brought
on a sudden into the upper air to see the sun rise. What would
his wonder be, his rapt astonishment at the sight we daily
witness with indifference! With the free open sense of a child,
yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be
kindled by that sight, he would discern it well to be Godlike,
his soul would fall down in worship before it. Now, just such
a childlike greatness was in the primitive nations. The first
many-sounding seas;—that great deep sea of azure that swims
overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and
rain; what is it? Ay, what? At bottom we do not yet know; we
can never know at all. It is not by our superior insight that we
escape the difficulty; it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our want of insight. It is by not thinking that we cease
to wonder at it. Hardened round us, encasing wholly every
notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere
Pagan Thinker among rude men, the first man that began to
think, was precisely this child-man of Plato’s. Simple, open
as a child, yet with the depth and strength of a man. Nature
had as yet no name to him; he had not yet united under a
name the infinite variety of sights, sounds, shapes and motions, which we now collectively name Universe, Nature, or
the like,—and so with a name dismiss it from us. To the wild
deep-hearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or
formulas; it stood naked, flashing in on him there, beautiful,
awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to the
Thinker and Prophet it forever is, preternatural. This green
flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers,
words. We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud “electricity,” and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out
of glass and silk: but what is it? What made it? Whence comes
it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a
poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred
infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on
which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world,
after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful,
inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
That great mystery of TIME, were there no other; the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which
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On Heroes
we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a
miracle; a thing to strike us dumb,—for we have no word to
speak about it. This Universe, ah me—what could the wild
man know of it; what can we yet know? That it is a Force,
and thousand-fold Complexity of Forces; a Force which is
not we. That is all; it is not we, it is altogether different from
us. Force, Force, everywhere Force; we ourselves a mysterious
Force in the centre of that. “There is not a leaf rotting on the
never so much science, is awe, devout prostration and humility of soul; worship if not in words, then in silence.
But now I remark farther: What in such a time as ours it
requires a Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, the strippingoff of those poor undevout wrappages, nomenclatures and
scientific hearsays,—this, the ancient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, did for itself. The world, which
is now divine only to the gifted, was then divine to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. He stood bare before it face
highway but has Force in it; how else could it rot?” Nay surely,
to the Atheistic Thinker, if such a one were possible, it must
be a miracle too, this huge illimitable whirlwind of Force,
which envelops us here; never-resting whirlwind, high as Immensity, old as Eternity. What is it? God’s Creation, the religious people answer; it is the Almighty God’s! Atheistic science babbles poorly of it, with scientific nomenclatures, experiments and what not, as if it were a poor dead thing, to be
bottled up in Leyden jars and sold over counters: but the natural sense of man, in all times, if he will honestly apply his
sense, proclaims it to be a living thing,—ah, an unspeakable,
godlike thing; towards which the best attitude for us, after
to face. “All was Godlike or God:”—Jean Paul still finds it
so; the giant Jean Paul, who has power to escape out of
hearsays: but there then were no hearsays. Canopus shining
down over the desert, with its blue diamond brightness (that
wild blue spirit-like brightness, far brighter than we ever witness here), would pierce into the heart of the wild Ishmaelitish
man, whom it was guiding through the solitary waste there.
To his wild heart, with all feelings in it, with no speech for
any feeling, it might seem a little eye, that Canopus, glancing
out on him from the great deep Eternity; revealing the inner
Splendor to him. Cannot we understand how these men worshipped Canopus; became what we call Sabeans, worshipping
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Thomas Carlyle
the stars? Such is to me the secret of all forms of Paganism.
Worship is transcendent wonder; wonder for which there is
now no limit or measure; that is worship. To these primeval
men, all things and everything they saw exist beside them
were an emblem of the Godlike, of some God.
And look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. To us
also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not a
God made visible, if we will open our minds and eyes? We do
not worship in that way now: but is it not reckoned still a
Chrysostom’s celebrated saying in reference to the Shekinah,
or Ark of Testimony, visible Revelation of God, among the
Hebrews: “The true Shekinah is Man!” Yes, it is even so: this
is no vain phrase; it is veritably so. The essence of our being,
the mystery in us that calls itself “I,”—ah, what words have
we for such things?—is a breath of Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life
of ours, is it not all as a vesture for that Unnamed? “There is
but one Temple in the Universe,” says the devout Novalis,
merit, proof of what we call a “poetic nature,” that we recognize how every object has a divine beauty in it; how every
object still verily is “a window through which we may look
into Infinitude itself ”? He that can discern the loveliness of
things, we call him Poet! Painter, Man of Genius, gifted, lovable. These poor Sabeans did even what he does,—in their
own fashion. That they did it, in what fashion soever, was a
merit: better than what the entirely stupid man did, what the
horse and camel did,—namely, nothing!
But now if all things whatsoever that we look upon are
emblems to us of the Highest God, I add that more so than
any of them is man such an emblem. You have heard of St.
“and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier shall that
high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this
Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven when we lay our
hand on a human body!” This sounds much like a mere flourish of rhetoric; but it is not so. If well meditated, it will turn
out to be a scientific fact; the expression, in such words as can
be had, of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of
miracles,—the great inscrutable mystery of God. We cannot
understand it, we know not how to speak of it; but we may
feel and know, if we like, that it is verily so.
Well; these truths were once more readily felt than now.
The young generations of the world, who had in them the
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On Heroes
freshness of young children, and yet the depth of earnest men,
who did not think that they had finished off all things in
Heaven and Earth by merely giving them scientific names,
but had to gaze direct at them there, with awe and wonder:
they felt better what of divinity is in man and Nature; they,
without being mad, could worship Nature, and man more
than anything else in Nature. Worship, that is, as I said above,
admire without limit: this, in the full use of their faculties,
with all sincerity of heart, they could do. I consider Hero-
than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour,
and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man’s life. Religion
I find stand upon it; not Paganism only, but far higher and
truer religions,—all religion hitherto known. Hero-worship,
heartfelt prostrate admiration, submission, burning, boundless, for a noblest godlike Form of Man,—is not that the
germ of Christianity itself? The greatest of all Heroes is One—
whom we do not name here! Let sacred silence meditate that
sacred matter; you will find it the ultimate perfection of a
worship to be the grand modifying element in that ancient
system of thought. What I called the perplexed jungle of Paganism sprang, we may say, out of many roots: every admiration, adoration of a star or natural object, was a root or fibre
of a root; but Hero-worship is the deepest root of all; the taproot, from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished
and grown.
And now if worship even of a star had some meaning in it,
how much more might that of a Hero! Worship of a Hero is
transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are
still admirable; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher
principle extant throughout man’s whole history on earth.
Or coming into lower, less unspeakable provinces, is not all
Loyalty akin to religious Faith also? Faith is loyalty to some
inspired Teacher, some spiritual Hero. And what therefore is
loyalty proper, the life-breath of all society, but an effluence
of Hero-worship, submissive admiration for the truly great?
Society is founded on Hero-worship. All dignities of rank,
on which human association rests, are what we may call a
Heroarchy (Government of Heroes),—or a Hierarchy, for it
is “sacred” enough withal! The Duke means Dux, Leader; King
is Kon-ning, Kan-ning, Man that knows or cans. Society everywhere is some representation, not insupportably inaccu13
Thomas Carlyle
rate, of a graduated Worship of Heroes—reverence and obedience done to men really great and wise. Not insupportably
inaccurate, I say! They are all as bank-notes, these social dignitaries, all representing gold;—and several of them, alas, always are forged notes. We can do with some forged false notes;
with a good many even; but not with all, or the most of
them forged! No: there have to come revolutions then; cries
of Democracy, Liberty and Equality, and I know not what:—
the notes being all false, and no gold to be had for them,
little kind of man! He was the “creature of the Time,” they
say; the Time called him forth, the Time did everything, he
nothing—but what we the little critic could have done too!
This seems to me but melancholy work. The Time call forth?
Alas, we have known Times call loudly enough for their great
man; but not find him when they called! He was not there;
Providence had not sent him; the Time, calling its loudest,
had to go down to confusion and wreck because he would
not come when called.
people take to crying in their despair that there is no gold,
that there never was any! “Gold,” Hero-worship, is nevertheless, as it was always and everywhere, and cannot cease till
man himself ceases.
I am well aware that in these days Hero-worship, the thing
I call Hero-worship, professes to have gone out, and finally
ceased. This, for reasons which it will be worth while some
time to inquire into, is an age that as it were denies the existence of great men; denies the desirableness of great men. Show
our critics a great man, a Luther for example, they begin to
what they call “account” for him; not to worship him, but
take the dimensions of him,—and bring him out to be a
For if we will think of it, no Time need have gone to ruin,
could it have found a man great enough, a man wise and good
enough: wisdom to discern truly what the Time wanted, valor
to lead it on the right road thither; these are the salvation of
any Time. But I liken common languid Times, with their
unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their languid doubting characters and embarrassed circumstances, impotently crumbling
down into ever worse distress towards final ruin;—all this I
liken to dry dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of Heaven
that shall kindle it. The great man, with his free force direct
out of God’s own hand, is the lightning. His word is the wise
healing word which all can believe in. All blazes round him
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On Heroes
now, when he has once struck on it, into fire like his own.
The dry mouldering sticks are thought to have called him
forth. They did want him greatly; but as to calling him forth—
! Those are critics of small vision, I think, who cry: “See, is it
not the sticks that made the fire?” No sadder proof can be
given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great
men. There is no sadder symptom of a generation than such
general blindness to the spiritual lightning, with faith only in
the heap of barren dead fuel. It is the last consummation of
admiration, loyalty, adoration, however dim and perverted it
may be. Hero-worship endures forever while man endures.
Boswell venerates his Johnson, right truly even in the Eighteenth century. The unbelieving French believe in their
Voltaire; and burst out round him into very curious Heroworship, in that last act of his life when they “stifle him under
roses.” It has always seemed to me extremely curious this of
Voltaire. Truly, if Christianity be the highest instance of Heroworship, then we may find here in Voltaireism one of the
unbelief. In all epochs of the world’s history, we shall find the
Great Man to have been the indispensable savior of his epoch;—the lightning, without which the fuel never would have
burnt. The History of the World, I said already, was the Biography of Great Men.
Such small critics do what they can to promote unbelief
and universal spiritual paralysis: but happily they cannot always completely succeed. In all times it is possible for a man
to arise great enough to feel that they and their doctrines are
chimeras and cobwebs. And what is notable, in no time whatever can they entirely eradicate out of living men’s hearts a
certain altogether peculiar reverence for Great Men; genuine
lowest! He whose life was that of a kind of Antichrist, does
again on this side exhibit a curious contrast. No people ever
were so little prone to admire at all as those French of Voltaire.
Persiflage was the character of their whole mind; adoration
had nowhere a place in it. Yet see! The old man of Ferney
comes up to Paris; an old, tottering, infirm man of eightyfour years. They feel that he too is a kind of Hero; that he has
spent his life in opposing error and injustice, delivering Calases,
unmasking hypocrites in high places;—in short that he too,
though in a strange way, has fought like a valiant man. They
feel withal that, if persiflage be the great thing, there never was
such a persifleur. He is the realized ideal of every one of them;
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Thomas Carlyle
the thing they are all wanting to be; of all Frenchmen the
most French. He is properly their god,—such god as they are
fit for. Accordingly all persons, from the Queen Antoinette
to the Douanier at the Porte St. Denis, do they not worship
him? People of quality disguise themselves as tavern-waiters.
The Maitre de Poste, with a broad oath, orders his Postilion,
“Va bon train; thou art driving M. de Voltaire.” At Paris his
carriage is “the nucleus of a comet, whose train fills whole
streets.” The ladies pluck a hair or two from his fur, to keep it
consider that no sceptical logic, or general triviality, insincerity and aridity of any Time and its influences can destroy this
noble inborn loyalty and worship that is in man. In times of
unbelief, which soon have to become times of revolution,
much down-rushing, sorrowful decay and ruin is visible to
everybody. For myself in these days, I seem to see in this indestructibility of Hero-worship the everlasting adamant lower
than which the confused wreck of revolutionary things cannot fall. The confused wreck of things crumbling and even
as a sacred relic. There was nothing highest, beautifulest, noblest in all France, that did not feel this man to be higher,
beautifuler, nobler.
Yes, from Norse Odin to English Samuel Johnson, from
the divine Founder of Christianity to the withered Pontiff of
Encyclopedism, in all times and places, the Hero has been
worshipped. It will ever be so. We all love great men; love,
venerate and bow down submissive before great men: nay can
we honestly bow down to anything else? Ah, does not every
true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him? No nobler or more blessed
feeling dwells in man’s heart. And to me it is very cheering to
crashing and tumbling all round us in these revolutionary ages,
will get down so far; no farther. It is an eternal corner-stone,
from which they can begin to build themselves up again. That
man, in some sense or other, worships Heroes; that we all of
us reverence and must ever reverence Great Men: this is, to
me, the living rock amid all rushings-down whatsoever;—
the one fixed point in modern revolutionary history, otherwise as if bottomless and shoreless.
So much of truth, only under an ancient obsolete vesture,
but the spirit of it still true, do I find in the Paganism of old
nations. Nature is still divine, the revelation of the workings
of God; the Hero is still worshipable: this, under poor cramped
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On Heroes
incipient forms, is what all Pagan religions have struggled, as
they could, to set forth. I think Scandinavian Paganism, to us
here, is more interesting than any other. It is, for one thing,
the latest; it continued in these regions of Europe till the eleventh century: eight hundred years ago the Norwegians were
still worshippers of Odin. It is interesting also as the creed of
our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in our veins, whom
doubtless we still resemble in so many ways. Strange: they
did believe that, while we believe so differently. Let us look a
written memorials, the record of these things was written
down. On the seabord of this wild land is a rim of grassy
country, where cattle can subsist, and men by means of them
and of what the sea yields; and it seems they were poetic men
these, men who had deep thoughts in them, and uttered
musically their thoughts. Much would be lost, had Iceland
not been burst up from the sea, not been discovered by the
Northmen! The old Norse Poets were many of them natives
of Iceland.
little at this poor Norse creed, for many reasons. We have
tolerable means to do it; for there is another point of interest
in these Scandinavian mythologies: that they have been preserved so well.
In that strange island Iceland,—burst up, the geologists say,
by fire from the bottom of the sea; a wild land of barrenness
and lava; swallowed many months of every year in black tempests, yet with a wild gleaming beauty in summertime; towering up there, stern and grim, in the North Ocean with its
snow jokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur-pools and horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste chaotic battle-field of Frost and
Fire;—where of all places we least looked for Literature or
Saemund, one of the early Christian Priests there, who perhaps had a lingering fondness for Paganism, collected certain
of their old Pagan songs, just about becoming obsolete then,—
Poems or Chants of a mythic, prophetic, mostly all of a religious character: that is what Norse critics call the Elder or
Poetic Edda. Edda, a word of uncertain etymology, is thought
to signify Ancestress. Snorro Sturleson, an Iceland gentleman,
an extremely notable personage, educated by this Saemund’s
grandson, took in hand next, near a century afterwards, to
put together, among several other books he wrote, a kind of
Prose Synopsis of the whole Mythology; elucidated by new
fragments of traditionary verse. A work constructed really with
17
Thomas Carlyle
great ingenuity, native talent, what one might call unconscious
art; altogether a perspicuous clear work, pleasant reading still:
this is the Younger or Prose Edda. By these and the numerous
other Sagas, mostly Icelandic, with the commentaries, Icelandic or not, which go on zealously in the North to this day, it
is possible to gain some direct insight even yet; and see that
old Norse system of Belief, as it were, face to face. Let us
forget that it is erroneous Religion; let us look at it as old
Thought, and try if we cannot sympathize with it somewhat.
Garden of the Asen, or Divinities; Jotunheim, a distant dark
chaotic land, is the home of the Jotuns.
Curious all this; and not idle or inane, if we will look at the
foundation of it! The power of Fire, or Flame, for instance,
which we designate by some trivial chemical name, thereby
hiding from ourselves the essential character of wonder that
dwells in it as in all things, is with these old Northmen, Loke,
a most swift subtle Demon, of the brood of the Jotuns. The
savages of the Ladrones Islands too (say some Spanish voyag-
The primary characteristic of this old Northland Mythology I find to be Impersonation of the visible workings of
Nature. Earnest simple recognition of the workings of Physical Nature, as a thing wholly miraculous, stupendous and divine. What we now lecture of as Science, they wondered at,
and fell down in awe before, as Religion The dark hostile
Powers of Nature they figure to themselves as “Jotuns,” Giants, huge shaggy beings of a demonic character. Frost, Fire,
Sea-tempest; these are Jotuns. The friendly Powers again, as
Summer-heat, the Sun, are Gods. The empire of this Universe is divided between these two; they dwell apart, in perennial internecine feud. The Gods dwell above in Asgard, the
ers) thought Fire, which they never had seen before, was a
devil or god, that bit you sharply when you touched it, and
that lived upon dry wood. From us too no Chemistry, if it
had not Stupidity to help it, would hide that Flame is a wonder. What is Flame?—Frost the old Norse Seer discerns to be
a monstrous hoary Jotun, the Giant Thrym, Hrym; or Rime,
the old word now nearly obsolete here, but still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost. Rime was not then as now a dead
chemical thing, but a living Jotun or Devil; the monstrous
Jotun Rime drove home his Horses at night, sat “combing
their manes,”—which Horses were Hail-Clouds, or fleet FrostWinds. His Cows—No, not his, but a kinsman’s, the Giant
18
On Heroes
Hymir’s Cows are Icebergs: this Hymir “looks at the rocks”
with his devil-eye, and they split in the glance of it.
Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous or resinous; it was the God Donner (Thunder) or Thor,—God also
of beneficent Summer-heat. The thunder was his wrath: the
gathering of the black clouds is the drawing down of Thor’s
angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of Heaven is the allrending Hammer flung from the hand of Thor: he urges his
loud chariot over the mountain-tops,—that is the peal; wrath-
erations have to teach us that the God Wish is not the true
God.
Of the other Gods or Jotuns I will mention only for
etymology’s sake, that Sea-tempest is the Jotun Aegir, a very
dangerous Jotun;—and now to this day, on our river Trent, as
I learn, the Nottingham bargemen, when the River is in a
certain flooded state (a kind of backwater, or eddying swirl it
has, very dangerous to them), call it Eager; they cry out, “Have
a care, there is the Eager coming!” Curious; that word surviv-
ful he “blows in his red beard,”—that is the rustling stormblast before the thunder begins. Balder again, the White God,
the beautiful, the just and benignant (whom the early Christian Missionaries found to resemble Christ), is the Sun,
beautifullest of visible things; wondrous too, and divine still,
after all our Astronomies and Almanacs! But perhaps the
notablest god we hear tell of is one of whom Grimm the
German Etymologist finds trace: the God Wunsch, or Wish.
The God Wish; who could give us all that we wished! Is not
this the sincerest and yet rudest voice of the spirit of man?
The rudest ideal that man ever formed; which still shows itself in the latest forms of our spiritual culture. Higher consid-
ing, like the peak of a submerged world! The oldest
Nottingham bargemen had believed in the God Aegir. Indeed our English blood too in good part is Danish, Norse; or
rather, at bottom, Danish and Norse and Saxon have no distinction, except a superficial one,—as of Heathen and Christian, or the like. But all over our Island we are mingled largely
with Danes proper,—from the incessant invasions there were:
and this, of course, in a greater proportion along the east coast;
and greatest of all, as I find, in the North Country. From the
Humber upwards, all over Scotland, the Speech of the common people is still in a singular degree Icelandic; its Germanism has still a peculiar Norse tinge. They too are “Normans,”
19
Thomas Carlyle
Northmen,—if that be any great beauty!—
Of the chief god, Odin, we shall speak by and by. Mark at
present so much; what the essence of Scandinavian and indeed of all Paganism is: a recognition of the forces of Nature
as godlike, stupendous, personal Agencies,—as Gods and
Demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the infant Thought of
man opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this ever-stupendous Universe. To me there is in the Norse system something very genuine, very great and manlike. A broad simplic-
the Jotun country; Thor, after many adventures, clapping the
Pot on his head, like a huge hat, and walking off with it,—
quite lost in it, the ears of the Pot reaching down to his heels!
A kind of vacant hugeness, large awkward gianthood, characterizes that Norse system; enormous force, as yet altogether
untutored, stalking helpless with large uncertain strides. Consider only their primary mythus of the Creation. The Gods,
having got the Giant Ymer slain, a Giant made by “warm
wind,” and much confused work, out of the conflict of Frost
ity, rusticity, so very different from the light gracefulness of
the old Greek Paganism, distinguishes this Scandinavian System. It is Thought; the genuine Thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about them; a face-toface and heart-to-heart inspection of the things,—the first
characteristic of all good Thought in all times. Not graceful
lightness, half-sport, as in the Greek Paganism; a certain
homely truthfulness and rustic strength, a great rude sincerity, discloses itself here. It is strange, after our beautiful Apollo
statues and clear smiling mythuses, to come down upon the
Norse Gods “brewing ale” to hold their feast with Aegir, the
Sea-Jotun; sending out Thor to get the caldron for them in
and Fire,—determined on constructing a world with him.
His blood made the Sea; his flesh was the Land, the Rocks his
bones; of his eyebrows they formed Asgard their Gods’-dwelling; his skull was the great blue vault of Immensity, and the
brains of it became the Clouds. What a Hyper-Brobdignagian
business! Untamed Thought, great, giantlike, enormous;—
to be tamed in due time into the compact greatness, not giantlike, but godlike and stronger than gianthood, of the
Shakspeares, the Goethes!—Spiritually as well as bodily these
men are our progenitors.
I like, too, that representation they have of the tree Igdrasil.
All Life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of
20
On Heroes
Existence, has its roots deep down in the kingdoms of Hela
or Death; its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs
over the whole Universe: it is the Tree of Existence. At the
foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, sit Three Nornas, Fates,—
the Past, Present, Future; watering its roots from the Sacred
Well. Its “boughs,” with their buddings and disleafings?—
events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes,—stretch
through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography,
every fibre there an act or word? Its boughs are Histories of
chine of the Universe,”—alas, do but think of that in contrast!
Well, it is strange enough this old Norse view of Nature;
different enough from what we believe of Nature. Whence it
specially came, one would not like to be compelled to say
very minutely! One thing we may say: It came from the
thoughts of Norse men;—from the thought, above all, of
the first Norse man who had an original power of thinking.
The First Norse “man of genius,” as we should call him! In-
Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence,
onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath of Human
Passion rustling through it;—or storm tost, the storm-wind
howling through it like the voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil,
the Tree of Existence. It is the past, the present, and the future; what was done, what is doing, what will be done; “the
infinite conjugation of the verb To do.” Considering how human things circulate, each inextricably in communion with
all,—how the word I speak to you to-day is borrowed, not
from Ulfila the Moesogoth only, but from all men since the
first man began to speak,—I find no similitude so true as this
of a Tree. Beautiful; altogether beautiful and great. The “Ma-
numerable men had passed by, across this Universe, with a
dumb vague wonder, such as the very animals may feel; or
with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only
feel;—till the great Thinker came, the original man, the Seer;
whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumbering capability of all into Thought. It is ever the way with the Thinker,
the spiritual Hero. What he says, all men were not far from
saying, were longing to say. The Thoughts of all start up, as
from painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought; answering
to it, Yes, even so! Joyful to men as the dawning of day from
night;—is it not, indeed, the awakening for them from nobeing into being, from death into life? We still honor such a
21
Thomas Carlyle
man; call him Poet, Genius, and so forth: but to these wild
men he was a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected blessing for them; a Prophet, a God!—Thought once
awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after
generation,—till its full stature is reached, and such System of
Thought can grow no farther; but must give place to another.
For the Norse people, the Man now named Odin, and Chief
Norse God, we fancy, was such a man. A Teacher, and Cap-
the Universe once promulgated, a like view starts into being
in all minds; grows, keeps ever growing, while it continues
credible there. In all minds it lay written, but invisibly, as in
sympathetic ink; at his word it starts into visibility in all. Nay,
in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all
others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world!—
One other thing we must not forget; it will explain, a little,
the confusion of these Norse Eddas. They are not one coherent System of Thought; but properly the summation of sev-
tain of soul and of body; a Hero, of worth immeasurable;
admiration for whom, transcending the known bounds, became adoration. Has he not the power of articulate Thinking; and many other powers, as yet miraculous? So, with
boundless gratitude, would the rude Norse heart feel. Has he
not solved for them the sphinx-enigma of this Universe; given
assurance to them of their own destiny there? By him they
know now what they have to do here, what to look for hereafter. Existence has become articulate, melodious by him; he
first has made Life alive!—We may call this Odin, the origin
of Norse Mythology: Odin, or whatever name the First Norse
Thinker bore while he was a man among men. His view of
eral successive systems. All this of the old Norse Belief which
is flung out for us, in one level of distance in the Edda, like a
picture painted on the same canvas, does not at all stand so in
the reality. It stands rather at all manner of distances and depths,
of successive generations since the Belief first began. All Scandinavian thinkers, since the first of them, contributed to that
Scandinavian System of Thought; in ever-new elaboration
and addition, it is the combined work of them all. What history it had, how it changed from shape to shape, by one
thinker’s contribution after another, till it got to the full final
shape we see it under in the Edda, no man will now ever
know: its Councils of Trebizond, Councils of Trent,
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On Heroes
Athanasiuses, Dantes, Luthers, are sunk without echo in the
dark night! Only that it had such a history we can all know.
Wheresover a thinker appeared, there in the thing he thought
of was a contribution, accession, a change or revolution made.
Alas, the grandest “revolution” of all, the one made by the
man Odin himself, is not this too sunk for us like the rest!
Of Odin what history? Strange rather to reflect that he had a
history! That this Odin, in his wild Norse vesture, with his
wild beard and eyes, his rude Norse speech and ways, was a
etry and so forth,—and came by and by to be worshipped as
Chief God by these Scandinavians, his Twelve Peers made
into Twelve Sons of his own, Gods like himself: Snorro has
no doubt of this. Saxo Grammaticus, a very curious Northman
of that same century, is still more unhesitating; scruples not
to find out a historical fact in every individual mythus, and
writes it down as a terrestrial event in Denmark or elsewhere.
Torfaeus, learned and cautious, some centuries later, assigns
by calculation a date for it: Odin, he says, came into Europe
man like us; with our sorrows, joys, with our limbs, features;—
intrinsically all one as we: and did such a work! But the work,
much of it, has perished; the worker, all to the name. “Wednesday,” men will say to-morrow; Odin’s day! Of Odin there
exists no history; no document of it; no guess about it worth
repeating.
Snorro indeed, in the quietest manner, almost in a brief
business style, writes down, in his Heimskringla, how Odin
was a heroic Prince, in the Black-Sea region, with Twelve Peers,
and a great people straitened for room. How he led these
Asen (Asiatics) of his out of Asia; settled them in the North
parts of Europe, by warlike conquest; invented Letters, Po-
about the Year 70 before Christ. Of all which, as grounded
on mere uncertainties, found to be untenable now, I need say
nothing. Far, very far beyond the Year 70! Odin’s date, adventures, whole terrestrial history, figure and environment are
sunk from us forever into unknown thousands of years.
Nay Grimm, the German Antiquary, goes so far as to deny
that any man Odin ever existed. He proves it by etymology.
The word Wuotan, which is the original form of Odin, a word
spread, as name of their chief Divinity, over all the Teutonic
Nations everywhere; this word, which connects itself, according to Grimm, with the Latin vadere, with the English wade
and such like,—means primarily Movement, Source of Move23
Thomas Carlyle
ment, Power; and is the fit name of the highest god, not of
any man. The word signifies Divinity, he says, among the old
Saxon, German and all Teutonic Nations; the adjectives
formed from it all signify divine, supreme, or something pertaining to the chief god. Like enough! We must bow to
Grimm in matters etymological. Let us consider it fixed that
Wuotan means Wading, force of Movement. And now still,
what hinders it from being the name of a Heroic Man and
Mover, as well as of a god? As for the adjectives, and words
were at first substantives and things. We cannot annihilate a
man for etymologies like that! Surely there was a First Teacher
and Captain; surely there must have been an Odin, palpable
to the sense at one time; no adjective, but a real Hero of flesh
and blood! The voice of all tradition, history or echo of history, agrees with all that thought will teach one about it, to
assure us of this.
How the man Odin came to be considered a god, the chief
god?—that surely is a question which nobody would wish to
formed from it,—did not the Spaniards in their universal
admiration for Lope, get into the habit of saying “a Lope
flower,” “a Lope dama,” if the flower or woman were of surpassing beauty? Had this lasted, Lope would have grown, in
Spain, to be an adjective signifying godlike also. Indeed, Adam
Smith, in his Essay on Language, surmises that all adjectives
whatsoever were formed precisely in that way: some very green
thing, chiefly notable for its greenness, got the appellative name
Green, and then the next thing remarkable for that quality, a
tree for instance, was named the green tree,—as we still say
“the steam coach,” “four-horse coach,” or the like. All primary adjectives, according to Smith, were formed in this way;
dogmatize upon. I have said, his people knew no limits to
their admiration of him; they had as yet no scale to measure
admiration by. Fancy your own generous heart’s-love of some
greatest man expanding till it transcended all bounds, till it
filled and overflowed the whole field of your thought! Or
what if this man Odin,—since a great deep soul, with the
afflatus and mysterious tide of vision and impulse rushing on
him he knows not whence, is ever an enigma, a kind of terror
and wonder to himself,—should have felt that perhaps he
was divine; that he was some effluence of the “Wuotan,”
“Movement”, Supreme Power and Divinity, of whom to his
rapt vision all Nature was the awful Flame-image; that some
24
On Heroes
effluence of Wuotan dwelt here in him! He was not necessarily false; he was but mistaken, speaking the truest he knew. A
great soul, any sincere soul, knows not what he is,—alternates between the highest height and the lowest depth; can,
of all things, the least measure—Himself! What others take
him for, and what he guesses that he may be; these two items
strangely act on one another, help to determine one another.
With all men reverently admiring him; with his own wild
soul full of noble ardors and affections, of whirlwind chaotic
monumental cairn. Why, in thirty or forty years, were there
no books, any great man would grow mythic, the contemporaries who had seen him, being once all dead. And in three
hundred years, and in three thousand years—! To attempt
theorizing on such matters would profit little: they are matters which refuse to be theoremed and diagramed; which Logic
ought to know that she cannot speak of. Enough for us to
discern, far in the uttermost distance, some gleam as of a small
real light shining in the centre of that enormous camera-ob-
darkness and glorious new light; a divine Universe bursting
all into godlike beauty round him, and no man to whom the
like ever had befallen, what could he think himself to be?
“Wuotan?” All men answered, “Wuotan!”—
And then consider what mere Time will do in such cases;
how if a man was great while living, he becomes tenfold greater
when dead. What an enormous camera-obscura magnifier is
Tradition! How a thing grows in the human Memory, in the
human Imagination, when love, worship and all that lies in
the human Heart, is there to encourage it. And in the darkness, in the entire ignorance; without date or document, no
book, no Arundel-marble; only here and there some dumb
scure image; to discern that the centre of it all was not a madness and nothing, but a sanity and something.
This light, kindled in the great dark vortex of the Norse
Mind, dark but living, waiting only for light; this is to me
the centre of the whole. How such light will then shine out,
and with wondrous thousand-fold expansion spread itself, in
forms and colors, depends not on it, so much as on the National Mind recipient of it. The colors and forms of your
light will be those of the cut-glass it has to shine through.—
Curious to think how, for every man, any the truest fact is
modelled by the nature of the man! I said, The earnest man,
speaking to his brother men, must always have stated what
25
Thomas Carlyle
seemed to him a fact, a real Appearance of Nature. But the
way in which such Appearance or fact shaped itself,—what
sort of fact it became for him,—was and is modified by his
own laws of thinking; deep, subtle, but universal, ever-operating laws. The world of Nature, for every man, is the Fantasy of Himself. this world is the multiplex “Image of his
own Dream.” Who knows to what unnamable subtleties of
spiritual law all these Pagan Fables owe their shape! The number Twelve, divisiblest of all, which could be halved, quar-
of Criticism”!—On the whole, we must leave those boundless regions. Cannot we conceive that Odin was a reality? Error indeed, error enough: but sheer falsehood, idle fables, allegory aforethought,—we will not believe that our Fathers
believed in these.
Odin’s Runes are a significant feature of him. Runes, and
the miracles of “magic” he worked by them, make a great
feature in tradition. Runes are the Scandinavian Alphabet;
suppose Odin to have been the inventor of Letters, as well as
tered, parted into three, into six, the most remarkable number,—this was enough to determine the Signs of the Zodiac,
the number of Odin’s Sons, and innumerable other Twelves.
Any vague rumor of number had a tendency to settle itself
into Twelve. So with regard to every other matter. And quite
unconsciously too,—with no notion of building up “ Allegories “! But the fresh clear glance of those First Ages would
be prompt in discerning the secret relations of things, and
wholly open to obey these. Schiller finds in the Cestus of Venus an everlasting aesthetic truth as to the nature of all Beauty;
curious:—but he is careful not to insinuate that the old Greek
Mythists had any notion of lecturing about the “Philosophy
“magic,” among that people! It is the greatest invention man
has ever made! this of marking down the unseen thought that
is in him by written characters. It is a kind of second speech,
almost as miraculous as the first. You remember the astonishment and incredulity of Atahualpa the Peruvian King; how
he made the Spanish Soldier who was guarding him scratch
Dios on his thumb-nail, that he might try the next soldier
with it, to ascertain whether such a miracle was possible. If
Odin brought Letters among his people, he might work magic
enough!
Writing by Runes has some air of being original among the
Norsemen: not a Phoenician Alphabet, but a native Scandi26
On Heroes
navian one. Snorro tells us farther that Odin invented Poetry;
the music of human speech, as well as that miraculous runic
marking of it. Transport yourselves into the early childhood
of nations; the first beautiful morning-light of our Europe,
when all yet lay in fresh young radiance as of a great sunrise,
and our Europe was first beginning to think, to be! Wonder,
hope; infinite radiance of hope and wonder, as of a young
child’s thoughts, in the hearts of these strong men! Strong
sons of Nature; and here was not only a wild Captain and
for it, he was noble and noblest; Hero, Prophet, God; Wuotan,
the greatest of all. Thought is Thought, however it speak or
spell itself. Intrinsically, I conjecture, this Odin must have
been of the same sort of stuff as the greatest kind of men. A
great thought in the wild deep heart of him! The rough words
he articulated, are they not the rudimental roots of those English words we still use? He worked so, in that obscure element. But he was as a light kindled in it; a light of Intellect,
rude Nobleness of heart, the only kind of lights we have yet;
Fighter; discerning with his wild flashing eyes what to do,
with his wild lion-heart daring and doing it; but a Poet too,
all that we mean by a Poet, Prophet, great devout Thinker
and Inventor,—as the truly Great Man ever is. A Hero is a
Hero at all points; in the soul and thought of him first of all.
This Odin, in his rude semi-articulate way, had a word to
speak. A great heart laid open to take in this great Universe,
and man’s Life here, and utter a great word about it. A Hero,
as I say, in his own rude manner; a wise, gifted, noble-hearted
man. And now, if we still admire such a man beyond all others, what must these wild Norse souls, first awakened into
thinking, have made of him! To them, as yet without names
a Hero, as I say: and he had to shine there, and make his
obscure element a little lighter,—as is still the task of us all.
We will fancy him to be the Type Norseman; the finest
Teuton whom that race had yet produced. The rude Norse
heart burst up into boundless admiration round him; into
adoration. He is as a root of so many great things; the fruit of
him is found growing from deep thousands of years, over the
whole field of Teutonic Life. Our own Wednesday, as I said,
is it not still Odin’s Day? Wednesbury, Wansborough,
Wanstead, Wandsworth: Odin grew into England too, these
are still leaves from that root! He was the Chief God to all
the Teutonic Peoples; their Pattern Norseman;—in such way
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Thomas Carlyle
did they admire their Pattern Norseman; that was the fortune
he had in the world.
Thus if the man Odin himself have vanished utterly, there
is this huge Shadow of him which still projects itself over the
whole History of his People. For this Odin once admitted to
be God, we can understand well that the whole Scandinavian
Scheme of Nature, or dim No-scheme, whatever it might
before have been, would now begin to develop itself altogether differently, and grow thenceforth in a new manner.
To me there is something very touching in this primeval figure of Heroism; in such artless, helpless, but hearty entire reception of a Hero by his fellow-men. Never so helpless in shape,
it is the noblest of feelings, and a feeling in some shape or other
perennial as man himself. If I could show in any measure, what
I feel deeply for a long time now, That it is the vital element of
manhood, the soul of man’s history here in our world,—it
would be the chief use of this discoursing at present. We do not
now call our great men Gods, nor admire without limit; ah no,
What this Odin saw into, and taught with his runes and his
rhymes, the whole Teutonic People laid to heart and carried
forward. His way of thought became their way of thought:—
such, under new conditions, is the history of every great thinker
still. In gigantic confused lineaments, like some enormous camera-obscure shadow thrown upwards from the dead deeps of
the Past, and covering the whole Northern Heaven, is not that
Scandinavian Mythology in some sort the Portraiture of this
man Odin? The gigantic image of his natural face, legible or
not legible there, expanded and confused in that manner! Ah,
Thought, I say, is always Thought. No great man lives in vain.
The History of the world is but the Biography of great men.
with limit enough! But if we have no great men, or do not
admire at all,—that were a still worse case.
This poor Scandinavian Hero-worship, that whole Norse
way of looking at the Universe, and adjusting oneself there,
has an indestructible merit for us. A rude childlike way of
recognizing the divineness of Nature, the divineness of Man;
most rude, yet heartfelt, robust, giantlike; betokening what a
giant of a man this child would yet grow to!—It was a truth,
and is none. Is it not as the half-dumb stifled voice of the
long-buried generations of our own Fathers, calling out of
the depths of ages to us, in whose veins their blood still runs:
“This then, this is what we made of the world: this is all the
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On Heroes
image and notion we could form to ourselves of this great
mystery of a Life and Universe. Despise it not. You are raised
high above it, to large free scope of vision; but you too are not
yet at the top. No, your notion too, so much enlarged, is but a
partial, imperfect one; that matter is a thing no man will ever,
in time or out of time, comprehend; after thousands of years
of ever-new expansion, man will find himself but struggling to
comprehend again a part of it: the thing is larger shall man, not
to be comprehended by him; an Infinite thing!”
way. A right valiant, true old race of men. Such recognition
of Nature one finds to be the chief element of Paganism;
recognition of Man, and his Moral Duty, though this too is
not wanting, comes to be the chief element only in purer
forms of religion. Here, indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in Human Beliefs; a great landmark in the religious development of Mankind. Man first puts himself in relation
with Nature and her Powers, wonders and worships over those;
not till a later epoch does he discern that all Power is Moral,
The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all Pagan Mythologies, we found to be recognition of the divineness of
Nature; sincere communion of man with the mysterious invisible Powers visibly seen at work in the world round him.
This, I should say, is more sincerely done in the Scandinavian
than in any Mythology I know. Sincerity is the great characteristic of it. Superior sincerity (far superior) consoles us for
the total want of old Grecian grace. Sincerity, I think, is better than grace. I feel that these old Northmen wore looking
into Nature with open eye and soul: most earnest, honest;
childlike, and yet manlike; with a great-hearted simplicity and
depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, unfearing
that the grand point is the distinction for him of Good and
Evil, of Thou shalt and Thou shalt not.
With regard to all these fabulous delineations in the _Edda_,
I will remark, moreover, as indeed was already hinted, that
most probably they must have been of much newer date; most
probably, even from the first, were comparatively idle for the
old Norsemen, and as it were a kind of Poetic sport. Allegory
and Poetic Delineation, as I said above, cannot be religious
Faith; the Faith itself must first be there, then Allegory enough
will gather round it, as the fit body round its soul. The Norse
Faith, I can well suppose, like other Faiths, was most active
while it lay mainly in the silent state, and had not yet much
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Thomas Carlyle
to say about itself, still less to sing.
Among those shadowy Edda matters, amid all that fantastic congeries of assertions, and traditions, in their musical
Mythologies, the main practical belief a man could have was
probably not much more than this: of the Valkyrs and the
Hall of Odin; of an inflexible Destiny; and that the one thing
needful for a man was to be brave. The Valkyrs are Choosers
of the Slain: a Destiny inexorable, which it is useless trying to
bend or soften, has appointed who is to be slain; this was a
lasting duty, valid in our day as in that, the duty of being
brave. Valor is still value. The first duty for a man is still that
of subduing Fear. We must get rid of Fear; we cannot act at
all till then. A man’s acts are slavish, not true but specious; his
very thoughts are false, he thinks too as a slave and coward,
till he have got Fear under his feet. Odin’s creed, if we disentangle the real kernel of it, is true to this hour. A man shall
and must be valiant; he must march forward, and quit himself like a man,—trusting imperturbably in the appointment
fundamental point for the Norse believer;—as indeed it is for
all earnest men everywhere, for a Mahomet, a Luther, for a
Napoleon too. It lies at the basis this for every such man; it is
the woof out of which his whole system of thought is woven. The Valkyrs; and then that these Choosers lead the brave
to a heavenly Hall of Odin; only the base and slavish being
thrust elsewhither, into the realms of Hela the Death-goddess: I take this to have been the soul of the whole Norse
Belief. They understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be brave; that Odin would have no favor for them,
but despise and thrust them out, if they were not brave. Consider too whether there is not something in this! It is an ever-
and choice of the upper Powers; and, on the whole, not fear at
all. Now and always, the completeness of his victory over
Fear will determine how much of a man he is.
It is doubtless very savage that kind of valor of the old
Northmen. Snorro tells us they thought it a shame and misery not to die in battle; and if natural death seemed to be
coming on, they would cut wounds in their flesh, that Odin
might receive them as warriors slain. Old kings, about to die,
had their body laid into a ship; the ship sent forth, with sails
set and slow fire burning it; that, once out at sea, it might
blaze up in flame, and in such manner bury worthily the old
hero, at once in the sky and in the ocean! Wild bloody valor;
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On Heroes
yet valor of its kind; better, I say, than none. In the old Seakings too, what an indomitable rugged energy! Silent, with
closed lips, as I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially brave; defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and all
men and things;—progenitors of our own Blakes and Nelsons!
No Homer sang these Norse Sea-kings; but Agamemnon’s
was a small audacity, and of small fruit in the world, to some
of them;—to Hrolf ’s of Normandy, for instance! Hrolf, or
Rollo Duke of Normandy, the wild Sea-king, has a share in
the right good improver, discerner, doer and worker in every
kind; for true valor, different enough from ferocity, is the
basis of all. A more legitimate kind of valor that; showing
itself against the untamed Forests and dark brute Powers of
Nature, to conquer Nature for us. In the same direction have
not we their descendants since carried it far? May such valor
last forever with us!
That the man Odin, speaking with a Hero’s voice and heart,
as with an impressiveness out of Heaven, told his People the
governing England at this hour.
Nor was it altogether nothing, even that wild sea-roving
and battling, through so many generations. It needed to be
ascertained which was the strongest kind of men; who were to
be ruler over whom. Among the Northland Sovereigns, too,
I find some who got the title Wood-cutter; Forest-felling Kings.
Much lies in that. I suppose at bottom many of them were
forest-fellers as well as fighters, though the Skalds talk mainly
of the latter,—misleading certain critics not a little; for no
nation of men could ever live by fighting alone; there could
not produce enough come out of that! I suppose the right
good fighter was oftenest also the right good forest-feller,—
infinite importance of Valor, how man thereby became a god;
and that his People, feeling a response to it in their own hearts,
believed this message of his, and thought it a message out of
Heaven, and him a Divinity for telling it them: this seems to
me the primary seed-grain of the Norse Religion, from which
all manner of mythologies, symbolic practices, speculations,
allegories, songs and sagas would naturally grow. Grow,—
how strangely! I called it a small light shining and shaping in
the huge vortex of Norse darkness. Yet the darkness itself was
alive; consider that. It was the eager inarticulate uninstructed
Mind of the whole Norse People, longing only to become
articulate, to go on articulating ever farther! The living doc31
Thomas Carlyle
trine grows, grows;—like a Banyan-tree; the first _seed_ is
the essential thing: any branch strikes itself down into the
earth, becomes a new root; and so, in endless complexity, we
have a whole wood, a whole jungle, one seed the parent of it
all. Was not the whole Norse Religion, accordingly, in some
sense, what we called “the enormous shadow of this man’s
likeness”? Critics trace some affinity in some Norse mythuses,
of the Creation and such like, with those of the Hindoos.
The Cow Adumbla, “licking the rime from the rocks,” has a
Elder Edda; of a rapt, earnest, sibylline sort. But they were
comparatively an idle adjunct of the matter, men who as it
were but toyed with the matter, these later Skalds; and it is
their songs chiefly that survive. In later centuries, I suppose,
they would go on singing, poetically symbolizing, as our
modern Painters paint, when it was no longer from the innermost heart, or not from the heart at all. This is everywhere
to be well kept in mind.
Gray’s fragments of Norse Lore, at any rate, will give one
kind of Hindoo look. A Hindoo Cow, transported into frosty
countries. Probably enough; indeed we may say undoubtedly,
these things will have a kindred with the remotest lands, with
the earliest times. Thought does not die, but only is changed.
The first man that began to think in this Planet of ours, he
was the beginner of all. And then the second man, and the
third man;—nay, every true Thinker to this hour is a kind of
Odin, teaches men his way of thought, spreads a shadow of
his own likeness over sections of the History of the World.
Of the distinctive poetic character or merit of this Norse
Mythology I have not room to speak; nor does it concern us
much. Some wild Prophecies we have, as the Voluspa in the
no notion of it;—any more than Pope will of Homer. It is no
square-built gloomy palace of black ashlar marble, shrouded
in awe and horror, as Gray gives it us: no; rough as the North
rocks, as the Iceland deserts, it is; with a heartiness, homeliness, even a tint of good humor and robust mirth in the middle
of these fearful things. The strong old Norse heart did not go
upon theatrical sublimities; they had not time to tremble. I
like much their robust simplicity; their veracity, directness of
conception. Thor “draws down his brows” in a veritable Norse
rage; “grasps his hammer till the knuckles grow white.” Beautiful traits of pity too, an honest pity. Balder “the white God”
dies; the beautiful, benignant; he is the Sungod. They try all
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On Heroes
Nature for a remedy; but he is dead. Frigga, his mother, sends
Hermoder to seek or see him: nine days and nine nights he
rides through gloomy deep valleys, a labyrinth of gloom; arrives at the Bridge with its gold roof: the Keeper says, “Yes,
Balder did pass here; but the Kingdom of the Dead is down
yonder, far towards the North.” Hermoder rides on; leaps
Hell-gate, Hela’s gate; does see Balder, and speak with him:
Balder cannot be delivered. Inexorable! Hela will not, for Odin
or any God, give him up. The beautiful and gentle has to
The Norse heart loves this Thor and his hammer-bolt; sports
with him. Thor is Summer-heat: the god of Peaceable Industry as well as Thunder. He is the Peasant’s friend; his true
henchman and attendant is Thialfi, Manual Labor. Thor himself engages in all manner of rough manual work, scorns no
business for its plebeianism; is ever and anon travelling to the
country of the Jotuns, harrying those chaotic Frost-monsters,
subduing them, at least straitening and damaging them. There
is a great broad humor in some of these things.
remain there. His Wife had volunteered to go with him, to
die with him. They shall forever remain there. He sends his
ring to Odin; Nanna his wife sends her thimble to Frigga, as a
remembrance.—Ah me!—
For indeed Valor is the fountain of Pity too;—of Truth,
and all that is great and good in man. The robust homely
vigor of the Norse heart attaches one much, in these delineations. Is it not a trait of right honest strength, says Uhland,
who has written a fine Essay on Thor, that the old Norse
heart finds its friend in the Thunder-god? That it is not frightened away by his thunder; but finds that Summer-heat, the
beautiful noble summer, must and will have thunder withal!
Thor, as we saw above, goes to Jotun-land, to seek Hymir’s
Caldron, that the Gods may brew beer. Hymir the huge Giant enters, his gray beard all full of hoar-frost; splits pillars
with the very glance of his eye; Thor, after much rough tumult, snatches the Pot, claps it on his head; the “handles of it
reach down to his heels.” The Norse Skald has a kind of loving sport with Thor. This is the Hymir whose cattle, the critics have discovered, are Icebergs. Huge untutored Brobdignag
genius,—needing only to be tamed down; into Shakspeares,
Dantes, Goethes! It is all gone now, that old Norse work,—
Thor the Thunder-god changed into Jack the Giant-killer:
but the mind that made it is here yet. How strangely things
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Thomas Carlyle
grow, and die, and do not die! There are twigs of that great
world-tree of Norse Belief still curiously traceable. This poor
Jack of the Nursery, with his miraculous shoes of swiftness,
coat of darkness, sword of sharpness, he is one. Hynde Etin,
and still more decisively Red Etin of Ireland, in the Scottish
Ballads, these are both derived from Norseland; Etin is evidently a Jotun. Nay, Shakspeare’s Hamlet is a twig too of this
same world-tree; there seems no doubt of that. Hamlet,
Amleth I find, is really a mythic personage; and his Tragedy,
Northmen, what Meditation has taught all men in all ages,
That this world is after all but a show,—a phenomenon or
appearance, no real thing. All deep souls see into that,—the
Hindoo Mythologist, the German Philosopher,—the
Shakspeare, the earnest Thinker, wherever he may be:
of the poisoned Father, poisoned asleep by drops in his ear,
and the rest, is a Norse mythus! Old Saxo, as his wont was,
made it a Danish history; Shakspeare, out of Saxo, made it
what we see. That is a twig of the world-tree that has grown,
I think;—by nature or accident that one has grown!
In fact, these old Norse songs have a truth in them, an inward perennial truth and greatness,—as, indeed, all must have
that can very long preserve itself by tradition alone. It is a
greatness not of mere body and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. There is a sublime uncomplaining melancholy
traceable in these old hearts. A great free glance into the very
deeps of thought. They seem to have seen, these brave old
tral seat of Jotun-land), is remarkable in this respect. Thialfi
was with him, and Loke. After various adventures, they entered upon Giant-land; wandered over plains, wild uncultivated places, among stones and trees. At nightfall they noticed a house; and as the door, which indeed formed one whole
side of the house, was open, they entered. It was a simple
habitation; one large hall, altogether empty. They stayed there.
Suddenly in the dead of the night loud noises alarmed them.
Thor grasped his hammer; stood in the door, prepared for
fight. His companions within ran hither and thither in their
terror, seeking some outlet in that rude hall; they found a
little closet at last, and took refuge there. Neither had Thor
“We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!”
One of Thor’s expeditions, to Utgard (the Outer Garden, cen-
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On Heroes
any battle: for, lo, in the morning it turned out that the noise
had been only the snoring of a certain enormous but peaceable Giant, the Giant Skrymir, who lay peaceably sleeping
near by; and this that they took for a house was merely his
Glove, thrown aside there; the door was the Glove-wrist; the
little closet they had fled into was the Thumb! Such a glove;—
I remark too that it had not fingers as ours have, but only a
thumb, and the rest undivided: a most ancient, rustic glove!
Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day; Thor, how-
to “strain your neck bending back to see the top of it,” Skrymir
went his ways. Thor and his companions were admitted; invited to take share in the games going on. To Thor, for his
part, they handed a Drinking-horn; it was a common feat,
they told him, to drink this dry at one draught. Long and
fiercely, three times over, Thor drank; but made hardly any
impression. He was a weak child, they told him: could he lift
that Cat he saw there? Small as the feat seemed, Thor with his
whole godlike strength could not; he bent up the creature’s
ever, had his own suspicions, did not like the ways of Skrymir;
determined at night to put an end to him as he slept. Raising
his hammer, he struck down into the Giant’s face a right thunder-bolt blow, of force to rend rocks. The Giant merely awoke;
rubbed his cheek, and said, Did a leaf fall? Again Thor struck,
so soon as Skrymir again slept; a better blow than before; but
the Giant only murmured, Was that a grain of sand? Thor’s
third stroke was with both his hands (the “knuckles white” I
suppose), and seemed to dint deep into Skrymir’s visage; but
he merely checked his snore, and remarked, There must be
sparrows roosting in this tree, I think; what is that they have
dropt?—At the gate of Utgard, a place so high that you had
back, could not raise its feet off the ground, could at the utmost raise one foot. Why, you are no man, said the Utgard
people; there is an Old Woman that will wrestle you! Thor,
heartily ashamed, seized this haggard Old Woman; but could
not throw her.
And now, on their quitting Utgard, the chief Jotun, escorting them politely a little way, said to Thor: “You are beaten
then:—yet be not so much ashamed; there was deception of
appearance in it. That Horn you tried to drink was the Sea;
you did make it ebb; but who could drink that, the bottomless! The Cat you would have lifted,—why, that is the
Midgard-snake, the Great World-serpent, which, tail in mouth,
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Thomas Carlyle
girds and keeps up the whole created world; had you torn
that up, the world must have rushed to ruin! As for the Old
Woman, she was Time, Old Age, Duration: with her what
can wrestle? No man nor no god with her; gods or men, she
prevails over all! And then those three strokes you struck,—
look at these three valleys; your three strokes made these!”
Thor looked at his attendant Jotun: it was Skrymir;—it was,
say Norse critics, the old chaotic rocky Earth in person, and
that glove-house was some Earth-cavern! But Skrymir had
Jonson, rare old Ben; runs in the blood of us, I fancy; for one
catches tones of it, under a still other shape, out of the American Backwoods.
That is also a very striking conception that of the Ragnarok,
Consummation, or Twilight of the Gods. It is in the Voluspa
Song; seemingly a very old, prophetic idea. The Gods and
Jotuns, the divine Powers and the chaotic brute ones, after
long contest and partial victory by the former, meet at last in
universal world-embracing wrestle and duel; World-serpent
vanished; Utgard with its sky-high gates, when Thor grasped
his hammer to smite them, had gone to air; only the Giant’s
voice was heard mocking: “Better come no more to
Jotunheim!”—
This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, not
of the prophetic and entirely devout: but as a mythus is there
not real antique Norse gold in it? More true metal, rough
from the Mimer-stithy, than in many a famed Greek Mythus
shaped far better! A great broad Brobdignag grin of true humor is in this Skrymir; mirth resting on earnestness and sadness, as the rainbow on black tempest: only a right valiant
heart is capable of that. It is the grim humor of our own Ben
against Thor, strength against strength; mutually extinctive;
and ruin, “twilight” sinking into darkness, swallows the created Universe. The old Universe with its Gods is sunk; but it
is not final death: there is to be a new Heaven and a new
Earth; a higher supreme God, and Justice to reign among
men. Curious: this law of mutation, which also is a law written in man’s inmost thought, had been deciphered by these
old earnest Thinkers in their rude style; and how, though all
dies, and even gods die, yet all death is but a phoenix firedeath, and new-birth into the Greater and the Better! It is the
fundamental Law of Being for a creature made of Time, living in this Place of Hope. All earnest men have seen into it;
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On Heroes
may still see into it.
And now, connected with this, let us glance at the last
mythus of the appearance of Thor; and end there. I fancy it
to be the latest in date of all these fables; a sorrowing protest
against the advance of Christianity,—set forth reproachfully
by some Conservative Pagan. King Olaf has been harshly
blamed for his over-zeal in introducing Christianity; surely I
should have blamed him far more for an under-zeal in that!
He paid dear enough for it; he died by the revolt of his Pagan
shore; but after some time, he addresses King Olaf thus: “Yes,
King Olaf, it is all beautiful, with the sun shining on it there;
green, fruitful, a right fair home for you; and many a sore day
had Thor, many a wild fight with the rock Jotuns, before he
could make it so. And now you seem minded to put away
Thor. King Olaf, have a care!” said the stranger, drawing down
his brows;—and when they looked again, he was nowhere to
be found.—This is the last appearance of Thor on the stage
of this world!
people, in battle, in the year 1033, at Stickelstad, near that
Drontheim, where the chief Cathedral of the North has now
stood for many centuries, dedicated gratefully to his memory
as Saint Olaf. The mythus about Thor is to this effect. King
Olaf, the Christian Reform King, is sailing with fit escort
along the shore of Norway, from haven to haven; dispensing
justice, or doing other royal work: on leaving a certain haven,
it is found that a stranger, of grave eyes and aspect, red beard,
of stately robust figure, has stept in. The courtiers address
him; his answers surprise by their pertinency and depth: at
length he is brought to the King. The stranger’s conversation
here is not less remarkable, as they sail along the beautiful
Do we not see well enough how the Fable might arise, without unveracity on the part of any one? It is the way most
Gods have come to appear among men: thus, if in Pindar’s
time “Neptune was seen once at the Nemean Games,” what
was this Neptune too but a “stranger of noble grave aspect,”—
fit to be “seen”! There is something pathetic, tragic for me in
this last voice of Paganism. Thor is vanished, the whole Norse
world has vanished; and will not return ever again. In like
fashion to that, pass away the highest things. All things that
have been in this world, all things that are or will be in it,
have to vanish: we have our sad farewell to give them.
That Norse Religion, a rude but earnest, sternly impressive
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Thomas Carlyle
[May 8, 1840.]
Consecration of Valor (so we may define it), sufficed for these
old valiant Northmen. Consecration of Valor is not a bad
thing! We will take it for good, so far as it goes. Neither is
there no use in knowing something about this old Paganism
of our Fathers. Unconsciously, and combined with higher
things, it is in us yet, that old Faith withal! To know it consciously, brings us into closer and clearer relation with the
Past,—with our own possessions in the Past. For the whole
Past, as I keep repeating, is the possession of the Present; the
LECTURE II.
THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET:
ISLAM.
F
of Paganism among the
Scandinavians in the North, we advance to a very dif
ferent epoch of religion, among a very different
people: Mahometanism among the Arabs. A great change;
what a change and progress is indicated here, in the universal
condition and thoughts of men!
The Hero is not now regarded as a God among his fellowmen; but as one God-inspired, as a Prophet. It is the second
phasis of Hero-worship: the first or oldest, we may say, has
passed away without return; in the history of the world there
will not again be any man, never so great, whom his fellowmen will take for a god. Nay we might rationally ask, Did
any set of human beings ever really think the man they saw
there standing beside them a god, the maker of this world?
ROM THE FIRST RUDE TIMES
Past had always something true, and is a precious possession.
In a different time, in a different place, it is always some other
_side_ of our common Human Nature that has been developing itself. The actual True is the sum of all these; not any
one of them by itself constitutes what of Human Nature is
hitherto developed. Better to know them all than misknow
them. “To which of these Three Religions do you specially
adhere?” inquires Meister of his Teacher. “To all the Three!”
answers the other: “To all the Three; for they by their union
first constitute the True Religion.”
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On Heroes
Perhaps not: it was usually some man they remembered, or
had seen. But neither can this any more be. The Great Man is
not recognized henceforth as a god any more.
It was a rude gross error, that of counting the Great Man a
god. Yet let us say that it is at all times difficult to know what
he is, or how to account of him and receive him! The most
significant feature in the history of an epoch is the manner it
has of welcoming a Great Man. Ever, to the true instincts of
men, there is something godlike in him. Whether they shall
imperfect enough: but to welcome, for example, a Burns as
we did, was that what we can call perfect? The most precious
gift that Heaven can give to the Earth; a man of “genius” as
we call it; the Soul of a Man actually sent down from the
skies with a God’s-message to us,—this we waste away as an
idle artificial firework, sent to amuse us a little, and sink it
into ashes, wreck and ineffectuality: such reception of a Great
Man I do not call very perfect either! Looking into the heart
of the thing, one may perhaps call that of Burns a still uglier
take him to be a god, to be a prophet, or what they shall take
him to be? that is ever a grand question; by their way of answering that, we shall see, as through a little window, into the
very heart of these men’s spiritual condition. For at bottom
the Great Man, as he comes from the hand of Nature, is ever
the same kind of thing: Odin, Luther, Johnson, Burns; I hope
to make it appear that these are all originally of one stuff; that
only by the world’s reception of them, and the shapes they
assume, are they so immeasurably diverse. The worship of
Odin astonishes us,—to fall prostrate before the Great Man,
into deliquium of love and wonder over him, and feel in their
hearts that he was a denizen of the skies, a god! This was
phenomenon, betokening still sadder imperfections in
mankind’s ways, than the Scandinavian method itself! To fall
into mere unreasoning deliquium of love and admiration, was
not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational supercilious
no-love at all is perhaps still worse!—It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to
do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of
the age, one may say, is to do it well.
We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet;
but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the
truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one. Farther, as
there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans,
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I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way to
get at his secret: let us try to understand what he meant with
the world; what the world meant and means with him, will
then be a more answerable question. Our current hypothesis
about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery
and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one.
The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man,
are disgraceful to ourselves only. When Pococke inquired of
lieve most things sooner than that. One would be entirely at
a loss what to think of this world at all, if quackery so grew
and were sanctioned here.
Alas, such theories are very lamentable. If we would attain
to knowledge of anything in God’s true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! They are the product of an Age of Scepticism: they indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere
death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, I think,
was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a
Grotius, Where the proof was of that story of the pigeon,
trained to pick peas from Mahomet’s ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof!
It is really time to dismiss all that. The word this man spoke
has been the life-guidance now of a hundred and eighty millions of men these twelve hundred years. These hundred and
eighty millions were made by God as well as we. A greater
number of God’s creatures believe in Mahomet’s word at this
hour, than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose
that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which
so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died by?
I, for my part, cannot form any such supposition. I will be-
religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house! If he
do not know and follow truly the properties of mortar, burnt
clay and what else be works in, it is no house that he makes,
but a rubbish-heap. It will not stand for twelve centuries, to
lodge a hundred and eighty millions; it will fall straightway.
A man must conform himself to Nature’s laws, be verily in
communion with Nature and the truth of things, or Nature
will answer him, No, not at all! Speciosities are specious—ah
me!—a Cagliostro, many Cagliostros, prominent world-leaders, do prosper by their quackery, for a day. It is like a forged
bank-note; they get it passed out of their worthless hands:
others, not they, have to smart for it. Nature bursts up in fire40
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flames, French Revolutions and such like, proclaiming with
terrible veracity that forged notes are forged.
But of a Great Man especially, of him I will venture to
assert that it is incredible he should have been other than true.
It seems to me the primary foundation of him, and of all that
can lie in him, this. No Mirabeau, Napoleon, Burns,
Cromwell, no man adequate to do anything, but is first of all
in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should
say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first charac-
great by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real as Life,
real as Death, is this Universe to him. Though all men should
forget its truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. At all
moments the Flame-image glares in upon him; undeniable,
there, there!—I wish you to take this as my primary definition of a Great Man. A little man may have this, it is competent to all men that God has made: but a Great Man cannot
be without it.
Such a man is what we call an original man; he comes to us
teristic of all men in any way heroic. Not the sincerity that
calls itself sincere; ah no, that is a very poor matter indeed;—
a shallow braggart conscious sincerity; oftenest self-conceit
mainly. The Great Man’s sincerity is of the kind he cannot
speak of, is not conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious
rather of insincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the
law of truth for one day? No, the Great Man does not boast
himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if
he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on
himself; he cannot help being sincere! The great Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out of the
awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so made; he is
at first-hand. A messenger he, sent from the Infinite Unknown
with tidings to us. We may call him Poet, Prophet, God;—in
one way or other, we all feel that the words he utters are as no
other man’s words. Direct from the Inner Fact of things;—he
lives, and has to live, in daily communion with that. Hearsays
cannot hide it from him; he is blind, homeless, miserable,
following hearsays; it glares in upon him. Really his utterances, are they not a kind of “revelation;”—what we must call
such for want of some other name? It is from the heart of the
world that he comes; he is portion of the primal reality of
things. God has made many revelations: but this man too,
has not God made him, the latest and newest of all? The
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“inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding:” we
must listen before all to him.
This Mahomet, then, we will in no wise consider as an
Inanity and Theatricality, a poor conscious ambitious schemer;
we cannot conceive him so. The rude message he delivered
was a real one withal; an earnest confused voice from the unknown Deep. The man’s words were not false, nor his workings here below; no Inanity and Simulacrum; a fiery mass of
Life cast up from the great bosom of Nature herself. To kindle
sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are
faults, what are the outward details of a life; if the inner secret
of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, neverended struggle of it, be forgotten? “It is not in man that
walketh to direct his steps.” Of all acts, is not, for a man,
repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that
same supercilious consciousness of no sin;—that is death; the
heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility and
fact; is dead: it is “pure” as dead dry sand is pure. David’s life
the world; the world’s Maker had ordered it so. Neither can
the faults, imperfections, insincerities even, of Mahomet, if
such were never so well proved against him, shake this primary fact about him.
On the whole, we make too much of faults; the details of
the business hide the real centre of it. Faults? The greatest of
faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the
Bible above all, one would think, might know better. Who is
called there “the man according to God’s own heart”? David,
the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes;
there was no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers
sneer and ask, Is this your man according to God’s heart? The
and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider
to be the truest emblem ever given of a man’s moral progress
and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it
the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is
good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as
into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with tears,
repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor
human nature! Is not a man’s walking, in truth, always that:
“a succession of falls”? Man can do no other. In this wild element of a Life, he has to struggle onwards; now fallen, deepabased; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart,
he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards. That his
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struggle be a faithful unconquerable one: that is the question
of questions. We will put up with many sad details, if the
soul of it were true. Details by themselves will never teach us
what it is. I believe we misestimate Mahomet’s faults even as
faults: but the secret of him will never be got by dwelling
there. We will leave all this behind us; and assuring ourselves
that he did mean some true thing, ask candidly what it was or
might be.
These Arabs Mahomet was born among are certainly a no-
sians are called the French of the East; we will call the Arabs
Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people; a people of wild strong
feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of
noble-mindedness, of genius. The wild Bedouin welcomes
the stranger to his tent, as one having right to all that is there;
were it his worst enemy, he will slay his foal to treat him, will
serve him with sacred hospitality for three days, will set him
fairly on his way;—and then, by another law as sacred, kill
him if he can. In words too as in action. They are not a loqua-
table people. Their country itself is notable; the fit habitation
for such a race. Savage inaccessible rock-mountains, great grim
deserts, alternating with beautiful strips of verdure: wherever
water is, there is greenness, beauty; odoriferous balm-shrubs,
date-trees, frankincense-trees. Consider that wide waste horizon of sand, empty, silent, like a sand-sea, dividing habitable
place from habitable. You are all alone there, left alone with
the Universe; by day a fierce sun blazing down on it with
intolerable radiance; by night the great deep Heaven with its
stars. Such a country is fit for a swift-handed, deep-hearted
race of men. There is something most agile, active, and yet
most meditative, enthusiastic in the Arab character. The Per-
cious people, taciturn rather; but eloquent, gifted when they
do speak. An earnest, truthful kind of men. They are, as we
know, of Jewish kindred: but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, which is not Jewish. They had “Poetic contests”
among them before the time of Mahomet. Sale says, at Ocadh,
in the South of Arabia, there were yearly fairs, and there, when
the merchandising was done, Poets sang for prizes:—the wild
people gathered to hear that.
One Jewish quality these Arabs manifest; the outcome of
many or of all high qualities: what we may call religiosity.
From of old they had been zealous worshippers, according to
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their light. They worshipped the stars, as Sabeans; worshipped
many natural objects,—recognized them as symbols, immediate manifestations, of the Maker of Nature. It was wrong;
and yet not wholly wrong. All God’s works are still in a sense
symbols of God. Do we not, as I urged, still account it a
merit to recognize a certain inexhaustible significance, “poetic
beauty” as we name it, in all natural objects whatsoever? A
man is a poet, and honored, for doing that, and speaking or
singing it,—a kind of diluted worship. They had many Proph-
this earth. And all in such free flowing outlines; grand in its
sincerity, in its simplicity; in its epic melody, and repose of
reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So true every way; true eyesight and vision for all
things; material things no less than spiritual: the Horse,—
”hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?”—he “laughs at
the shaking of the spear!” Such living likenesses were never
since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest
choral melody as of the heart of mankind;—so soft, and great;
ets, these Arabs; Teachers each to his tribe, each according to
the light he had. But indeed, have we not from of old the
noblest of proofs, still palpable to every one of us, of what
devoutness and noble-mindedness had dwelt in these rustic
thoughtful peoples? Biblical critics seem agreed that our own
Book of Job was written in that region of the world. I call that,
apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things
ever written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not
Hebrew; such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble Book; all men’s
Book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending
Problem,—man’s destiny, and God’s ways with him here in
as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars!
There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of
equal literary merit.—
To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient universal
objects of worship was that Black Stone, still kept in the building called Caabah, at Mecca. Diodorus Siculus mentions this
Caabah in a way not to be mistaken, as the oldest, most honored temple in his time; that is, some half-century before our
Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some likelihood that the
Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, some man might see it
fall out of Heaven! It stands now beside the Well Zemzem;
the Caabah is built over both. A Well is in all places a beauti44
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ful affecting object, gushing out like life from the hard earth;—
still more so in those hot dry countries, where it is the first
condition of being. The Well Zemzem has its name from the
bubbling sound of the waters, zem-zem; they think it is the
Well which Hagar found with her little Ishmael in the wilderness: the aerolite and it have been sacred now, and had a
Caabah over them, for thousands of years. A curious object,
that Caabah! There it stands at this hour, in the black clothcovering the Sultan sends it yearly; “twenty-seven cubits high;”
hills, at a distance from the sea; its provisions, its very bread,
have to be imported. But so many pilgrims needed lodgings:
and then all places of pilgrimage do, from the first, become
places of trade. The first day pilgrims meet, merchants have
also met: where men see themselves assembled for one object, they find that they can accomplish other objects which
depend on meeting together. Mecca became the Fair of all
Arabia. And thereby indeed the chief staple and warehouse of
whatever Commerce there was between the Indian and the
with circuit, with double circuit of pillars, with festoon-rows
of lamps and quaint ornaments: the lamps will be lighted
again this night,—to glitter again under the stars. An authentic fragment of the oldest Past. It is the Keblah of all Moslem:
from Delhi all onwards to Morocco, the eyes of innumerable
praying men are turned towards it, five times, this day and all
days: one of the notablest centres in the Habitation of Men.
It had been from the sacredness attached to this Caabah
Stone and Hagar’s Well, from the pilgrimings of all tribes of
Arabs thither, that Mecca took its rise as a Town. A great
town once, though much decayed now. It has no natural advantage for a town; stands in a sandy hollow amid bare barren
Western countries, Syria, Egypt, even Italy. It had at one time
a population of 100,000; buyers, forwarders of those Eastern
and Western products; importers for their own behoof of
provisions and corn. The government was a kind of irregular
aristocratic republic, not without a touch of theocracy. Ten
Men of a chief tribe, chosen in some rough way, were Governors of Mecca, and Keepers of the Caabah. The Koreish were
the chief tribe in Mahomet’s time; his own family was of that
tribe. The rest of the Nation, fractioned and cut asunder by
deserts, lived under similar rude patriarchal governments by
one or several: herdsmen, carriers, traders, generally robbers
too; being oftenest at war one with another, or with all: held
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together by no open bond, if it were not this meeting at the
Caabah, where all forms of Arab Idolatry assembled in common adoration;—held mainly by the inward indissoluble
bond of a common blood and language. In this way had the
Arabs lived for long ages, unnoticed by the world; a people of
great qualities, unconsciously waiting for the day when they
should become notable to all the world. Their Idolatries appear to have been in a tottering state; much was getting into
confusion and fermentation among them. Obscure tidings of
man, a hundred years old. A good old man: Mahomet’s Father, Abdallah, had been his youngest favorite son. He saw in
Mahomet, with his old life-worn eyes, a century old, the lost
Abdallah come back again, all that was left of Abdallah. He
loved the little orphan Boy greatly; used to say, They must
take care of that beautiful little Boy, nothing in their kindred
was more precious than he. At his death, while the boy was
still but two years old, he left him in charge to Abu Thaleb
the eldest of the Uncles, as to him that now was head of the
the most important Event ever transacted in this world, the
Life and Death of the Divine Man in Judea, at once the symptom and cause of immeasurable change to all people in the
world, had in the course of centuries reached into Arabia too;
and could not but, of itself, have produced fermentation there.
It was among this Arab people, so circumstanced, in the
year 570 of our Era, that the man Mahomet was born. He
was of the family of Hashem, of the Koreish tribe as we said;
though poor, connected with the chief persons of his country. Almost at his birth he lost his Father; at the age of six
years his Mother too, a woman noted for her beauty, her worth
and sense: he fell to the charge of his Grandfather, an old
house. By this Uncle, a just and rational man as everything
betokens, Mahomet was brought up in the best Arab way.
Mahomet, as he grew up, accompanied his Uncle on trading journeys and such like; in his eighteenth year one finds
him a fighter following his Uncle in war. But perhaps the
most significant of all his journeys is one we find noted as of
some years’ earlier date: a journey to the Fairs of Syria. The
young man here first came in contact with a quite foreign
world,—with one foreign element of endless moment to him:
the Christian Religion. I know not what to make of that
“Sergius, the Nestorian Monk,” whom Abu Thaleb and he
are said to have lodged with; or how much any monk could
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have taught one still so young. Probably enough it is greatly
exaggerated, this of the Nestorian Monk. Mahomet was only
fourteen; had no language but his own: much in Syria must
have been a strange unintelligible whirlpool to him. But the
eyes of the lad were open; glimpses of many things would
doubtless be taken in, and lie very enigmatic as yet, which
were to ripen in a strange way into views, into beliefs and
insights one day. These journeys to Syria were probably the
beginning of much to Mahomet.
world, was in a manner as good as not there for him. Of the
great brother souls, flame-beacons through so many lands and
times, no one directly communicates with this great soul. He
is alone there, deep down in the bosom of the Wilderness;
has to grow up so,—alone with Nature and his own Thoughts.
But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful man. His companions named him “Al Amin, The Faithful.” A man of truth and fidelity; true in what he did, in what
he spake and thought. They noted that he always meant some-
One other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no
school-learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at
all. The art of writing was but just introduced into Arabia; it
seems to be the true opinion that Mahomet never could write!
Life in the Desert, with its experiences, was all his education.
What of this infinite Universe he, from his dim place, with
his own eyes and thoughts, could take in, so much and no
more of it was he to know. Curious, if we will reflect on it,
this of having no books. Except by what he could see for
himself, or hear of by uncertain rumor of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could know nothing. The wisdom
that had been before him or at a distance from him in the
thing. A man rather taciturn in speech; silent when there was
nothing to be said; but pertinent, wise, sincere, when he did
speak; always throwing light on the matter. This is the only
sort of speech worth speaking! Through life we find him to
have been regarded as an altogether solid, brotherly, genuine
man. A serious, sincere character; yet amiable, cordial, companionable, jocose even;—a good laugh in him withal: there
are men whose laugh is as untrue as anything about them;
who cannot laugh. One hears of Mahomet’s beauty: his fine
sagacious honest face, brown florid complexion, beaming
black eyes;—I somehow like too that vein on the brow, which
swelled up black when he was in anger: like the “horseshoe
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vein” in Scott’s _Redgauntlet_. It was a kind of feature in the
Hashem family, this black swelling vein in the brow; Mahomet
had it prominent, as would appear. A spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! Full of wild faculty, fire and
light; of wild worth, all uncultured; working out his life-task
in the depths of the Desert there.
How he was placed with Kadijah, a rich Widow, as her Steward, and travelled in her business, again to the Fairs of Syria;
how he managed all, as one can well understand, with fidel-
erto, to live an honest life; his “fame,” the mere good opinion
of neighbors that knew him, had been sufficient hitherto. Not
till he was already getting old, the prurient heat of his life all
burnt out, and peace growing to be the chief thing this world
could give him, did he start on the “career of ambition;” and,
belying all his past character and existence, set up as a wretched
empty charlatan to acquire what he could now no longer enjoy! For my share, I have no faith whatever in that.
Ah no: this deep-hearted Son of the Wilderness, with his
ity, adroitness; how her gratitude, her regard for him grew:
the story of their marriage is altogether a graceful intelligible
one, as told us by the Arab authors. He was twenty-five; she
forty, though still beautiful. He seems to have lived in a most
affectionate, peaceable, wholesome way with this wedded
benefactress; loving her truly, and her alone. It goes greatly
against the impostor theory, the fact that he lived in this entirely unexceptionable, entirely quiet and commonplace way,
till the heat of his years was done. He was forty before he
talked of any mission from Heaven. All his irregularities, real
and supposed, date from after his fiftieth year, when the good
Kadijah died. All his “ambition,” seemingly, had been, hith-
beaming black eyes and open social deep soul, had other
thoughts in him than ambition. A silent great soul; he was
one of those who cannot but be in earnest; whom Nature
herself has appointed to be sincere. While others walk in formulas and hearsays, contented enough to dwell there, this
man could not screen himself in formulas; he was alone with
his own soul and the reality of things. The great Mystery of
Existence, as I said, glared in upon him, with its terrors, with
its splendors; no hearsays could hide that unspeakable fact,
“Here am I!” Such sincerity, as we named it, has in very truth
something of divine. The word of such a man is a Voice direct from Nature’s own Heart. Men do and must listen to
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that as to nothing else;—all else is wind in comparison. From
of old, a thousand thoughts, in his pilgrimings and wanderings, had been in this man: What am I? What is this unfathomable Thing I live in, which men name Universe? What is
Life; what is Death? What am I to believe? What am I to do?
The grim rocks of Mount Hara, of Mount Sinai, the stern
sandy solitudes answered not. The great Heaven rolling silent
overhead, with its blue-glancing stars, answered not. There
was no answer. The man’s own soul, and what of God’s inspi-
all these must correspond with, be the image of, or they are—
Idolatries; “bits of black wood pretending to be God;” to the
earnest soul a mockery and abomination. Idolatries never so
gilded, waited on by heads of the Koreish, will do nothing
for this man. Though all men walk by them, what good is it?
The great Reality stands glaring there upon him. He there has
to answer it, or perish miserably. Now, even now, or else
through all Eternity never! Answer it; thou must find an answer.—Ambition? What could all Arabia do for this man;
ration dwelt there, had to answer!
It is the thing which all men have to ask themselves; which
we too have to ask, and answer. This wild man felt it to be of
infinite moment; all other things of no moment whatever in
comparison. The jargon of argumentative Greek Sects, vague
traditions of Jews, the stupid routine of Arab Idolatry: there
was no answer in these. A Hero, as I repeat, has this first distinction, which indeed we may call first and last, the Alpha
and Omega of his whole Heroism, That he looks through
the shows of things into things. Use and wont, respectable
hearsay, respectable formula: all these are good, or are not
good. There is something behind and beyond all these, which
with the crown of Greek Heraclius, of Persian Chosroes, and
all crowns in the Earth;—what could they all do for him? It
was not of the Earth he wanted to hear tell; it was of the
Heaven above and of the Hell beneath. All crowns and sovereignties whatsoever, where would they in a few brief years be?
To be Sheik of Mecca or Arabia, and have a bit of gilt wood
put into your hand,—will that be one’s salvation? I decidedly
think, not. We will leave it altogether, this impostor hypothesis, as not credible; not very tolerable even, worthy chiefly of
dismissal by us.
Mahomet had been wont to retire yearly, during the month
Ramadhan, into solitude and silence; as indeed was the Arab
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custom; a praiseworthy custom, which such a man, above all,
would find natural and useful. Communing with his own
heart, in the silence of the mountains; himself silent; open to
the “small still voices:” it was a right natural custom! Mahomet
was in his fortieth year, when having withdrawn to a cavern
in Mount Hara, near Mecca, during this Ramadhan, to pass
the month in prayer, and meditation on those great questions, he one day told his wife Kadijah, who with his household was with him or near him this year, That by the un-
The thing He sends to us, were it death and worse than death,
shall be good, shall be best; we resign ourselves to God.—”If
this be Islam,” says Goethe, “do we not all live in Islam?” Yes,
all of us that have any moral life; we all live so. It has ever
been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely to submit to Necessity,—Necessity will make him submit,—but
to know and believe well that the stern thing which Necessity
had ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing wanted there.
To cease his frantic pretension of scanning this great God’s-
speakable special favor of Heaven he had now found it all
out; was in doubt and darkness no longer, but saw it all. That
all these Idols and Formulas were nothing, miserable bits of
wood; that there was One God in and over all; and we must
leave all Idols, and look to Him. That God is great; and that
there is nothing else great! He is the Reality. Wooden Idols are
not real; He is real. He made us at first, sustains us yet; we
and all things are but the shadow of Him; a transitory garment veiling the Eternal Splendor. “Allah akbar, God is
great;”—and then also “Islam,” That we must submit to God.
That our whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him,
whatsoever He do to us. For this world, and for the other!
World in his small fraction of a brain; to know that it had
verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a Just Law, that
the soul of it was Good;—that his part in it was to conform
to the Law of the Whole, and in devout silence follow that;
not questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable.
I say, this is yet the only true morality known. A man is
right and invincible, virtuous and on the road towards sure
conquest, precisely while he joins himself to the great deep
Law of the World, in spite of all superficial laws, temporary
appearances, profit-and-loss calculations; he is victorious while
he co-operates with that great central Law, not victorious otherwise:—and surely his first chance of co-operating with it,
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or getting into the course of it, is to know with his whole
soul that it is; that it is good, and alone good! This is the soul
of Islam; it is properly the soul of Christianity;—for Islam is
definable as a confused form of Christianity; had Christianity
not been, neither had it been. Christianity also commands us,
before all, to be resigned to God. We are to take no counsel
with flesh and blood; give ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows
and wishes: to know that we know nothing; that the worst
and cruelest to our eyes is not what it seems; that we have to
can but babble on the surface. “Is not Belief the true godannouncing Miracle?” says Novalis.—That Mahomet’s whole
soul, set in flame with this grand Truth vouchsafed him, should
feel as if it were important and the only important thing, was
very natural. That Providence had unspeakably honored him
by revealing it, saving him from death and darkness; that he
therefore was bound to make known the same to all creatures: this is what was meant by “Mahomet is the Prophet of
God;” this too is not without its true meaning.—
receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God above, and say,
It is good and wise, God is great! “Though He slay me, yet
will I trust in Him.” Islam means in its way Denial of Self,
Annihilation of Self. This is yet the highest Wisdom that
Heaven has revealed to our Earth.
Such light had come, as it could, to illuminate the darkness
of this wild Arab soul. A confused dazzling splendor as of life
and Heaven, in the great darkness which threatened to be death:
he called it revelation and the angel Gabriel;—who of us yet
can know what to call it? It is the “inspiration of the Almighty”
that giveth us understanding. To know; to get into the truth
of anything, is ever a mystic act,—of which the best Logics
The good Kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him with wonder, with doubt: at length she answered: Yes, it was true this
that he said. One can fancy too the boundless gratitude of
Mahomet; and how of all the kindnesses she had done him,
this of believing the earnest struggling word he now spoke
was the greatest. “It is certain,” says Novalis, “my Conviction
gains infinitely, the moment another soul will believe in it.”
It is a boundless favor.—He never forgot this good Kadijah.
Long afterwards, Ayesha his young favorite wife, a woman
who indeed distinguished herself among the Moslem, by all
manner of qualities, through her whole long life; this young
brilliant Ayesha was, one day, questioning him: “Now am
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not I better than Kadijah? She was a widow; old, and had lost
her looks: you love me better than you did her?”—” No, by
Allah!” answered Mahomet: “No, by Allah! She believed in
me when none else would believe. In the whole world I had
but one friend, and she was that!”—Seid, his Slave, also believed in him; these with his young Cousin Ali, Abu Thaleb’s
son, were his first converts.
He spoke of his Doctrine to this man and that; but the
most treated it with ridicule, with indifference; in three years,
unfriendly to Mahomet; yet the sight there, of one unlettered
elderly man, with a lad of sixteen, deciding on such an enterprise against all mankind, appeared ridiculous to them; the
assembly broke up in laughter. Nevertheless it proved not a
laughable thing; it was a very serious thing! As for this young
Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble-minded creature, as he
shows himself, now and always afterwards; full of affection,
of fiery daring. Something chivalrous in him; brave as a lion;
yet with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of Christian
I think, he had gained but thirteen followers. His progress
was slow enough. His encouragement to go on, was altogether the usual encouragement that such a man in such a case
meets. After some three years of small success, he invited forty
of his chief kindred to an entertainment; and there stood up
and told them what his pretension was: that he had this thing
to promulgate abroad to all men; that it was the highest thing,
the one thing: which of them would second him in that?
Amid the doubt and silence of all, young Ali, as yet a lad of
sixteen, impatient of the silence, started up, and exclaimed in
passionate fierce language, That he would! The assembly,
among whom was Abu Thaleb, Ali’s Father, could not be
knighthood. He died by assassination in the Mosque at
Bagdad; a death occasioned by his own generous fairness, confidence in the fairness of others: he said, If the wound proved
not unto death, they must pardon the Assassin; but if it did,
then they must slay him straightway, that so they two in the
same hour might appear before God, and see which side of
that quarrel was the just one!
Mahomet naturally gave offence to the Koreish, Keepers of
the Caabah, superintendents of the Idols. One or two men of
influence had joined him: the thing spread slowly, but it was
spreading. Naturally he gave offence to everybody: Who is
this that pretends to be wiser than we all; that rebukes us all,
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as mere fools and worshippers of wood! Abu Thaleb the good
Uncle spoke with him: Could he not be silent about all that;
believe it all for himself, and not trouble others, anger the
chief men, endanger himself and them all, talking of it?
Mahomet answered: If the Sun stood on his right hand and
the Moon on his left, ordering him to hold his peace, he
could not obey! No: there was something in this Truth he
had got which was of Nature herself; equal in rank to Sun, or
Moon, or whatsoever thing Nature had made. It would speak
refuge in Abyssinia over the sea. The Koreish grew ever angrier; laid plots, and swore oaths among them, to put
Mahomet to death with their own hands. Abu Thaleb was
dead, the good Kadijah was dead. Mahomet is not solicitous
of sympathy from us; but his outlook at this time was one of
the dismalest. He had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise;
fly hither and thither; homeless, in continual peril of his life.
More than once it seemed all over with him; more than once
it turned on a straw, some rider’s horse taking fright or the
itself there, so long as the Almighty allowed it, in spite of Sun
and Moon, and all Koreish and all men and things. It must
do that, and could do no other. Mahomet answered so; and,
they say, “burst into tears.” Burst into tears: he felt that Abu
Thaleb was good to him; that the task he had got was no
soft, but a stern and great one.
He went on speaking to who would listen to him; publishing his Doctrine among the pilgrims as they came to Mecca;
gaining adherents in this place and that. Continual contradiction, hatred, open or secret danger attended him. His powerful relations protected Mahomet himself; but by and by, on
his own advice, all his adherents had to quit Mecca, and seek
like, whether Mahomet and his Doctrine had not ended there,
and not been heard of at all. But it was not to end so.
In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies all
banded against him, forty sworn men, one out of every tribe,
waiting to take his life, and no continuance possible at Mecca
for him any longer, Mahomet fled to the place then called
Yathreb, where he had gained some adherents; the place they
now call Medina, or “Medinat al Nabi, the City of the
Prophet,” from that circumstance. It lay some two hundred
miles off, through rocks and deserts; not without great difficulty, in such mood as we may fancy, he escaped thither, and
found welcome. The whole East dates its era from this Flight,
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hegira as they name it: the Year 1 of this Hegira is 622 of our
Era, the fifty-third of Mahomet’s life. He was now becoming
an old man; his friends sinking round him one by one; his
path desolate, encompassed with danger: unless he could find
hope in his own heart, the outward face of things was but
hopeless for him. It is so with all men in the like case. Hitherto Mahomet had professed to publish his Religion by the
way of preaching and persuasion alone. But now, driven foully
out of his native country, since unjust men had not only given
in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if we take
this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion,
there is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but where
will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its starting, is
precisely in a minority of one. In one man’s head alone, there it
dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it;
there is one man against all men. That he take a sword, and
try to propagate with that, will do little for him. You must
first get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate
no ear to his earnest Heaven’s-message, the deep cry of his
heart, but would not even let him live if he kept speaking
it,—the wild Son of the Desert resolved to defend himself,
like a man and Arab. If the Koreish will have it so, they shall
have it. Tidings, felt to be of infinite moment to them and all
men, they would not listen to these; would trample them down
by sheer violence, steel and murder: well, let steel try it then!
Ten years more this Mahomet had; all of fighting of breathless
impetuous toil and struggle; with what result we know.
Much has been said of Mahomet’s propagating his Religion
by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast
of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably
itself as it can. We do not find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the sword, when once it had got
one. Charlemagne’s conversion of the Saxons was not by
preaching. I care little about the sword: I will allow a thing to
struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or
implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach,
and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself,
and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it
will, in the long-run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. What is better than itself, it cannot
put away, but only what is worse. In this great Duel, Nature
herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the thing which is
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deepest-rooted in Nature, what we call truest, that thing and
not the other will be found growing at last.
Here however, in reference to much that there is in Mahomet
and his success, we are to remember what an umpire Nature
is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there
is in her. You take wheat to cast into the Earth’s bosom; your
wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it
into the kind just Earth; she grows the wheat,—the whole
tific Theorem of the Universe; which cannot be complete;
which cannot but be found, one day, incomplete, erroneous,
and so die and disappear. The body of all Truth dies; and yet
in all, I say, there is a soul which never dies; which in new and
ever-nobler embodiment lives immortal as man himself! It is
the way with Nature. The genuine essence of Truth never dies.
That it be genuine, a voice from the great Deep of Nature,
there is the point at Nature’s judgment-seat. What we call
pure or impure, is not with her the final question. Not how
rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the
rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there; the good Earth
is silent about all the rest,—has silently turned all the rest to
some benefit too, and makes no complaint about it! So everywhere in Nature! She is true and not a lie; and yet so great,
and just, and motherly in her truth. She requires of a thing
only that it be genuine of heart; she will protect it if so; will
not, if not so. There is a soul of truth in all the things she ever
gave harbor to. Alas, is not this the history of all highest Truth
that comes or ever came into the world? The body of them all
is imperfection, an element of light in darkness: to us they
have to come embodied in mere Logic, in some merely scien-
much chaff is in you; but whether you have any wheat. Pure?
I might say to many a man: Yes, you are pure; pure enough;
but you are chaff,—insincere hypothesis, hearsay, formality;
you never were in contact with the great heart of the Universe
at all; you are properly neither pure nor impure; you are nothing, Nature has no business with you. Mahomet’s Creed we
called a kind of Christianity; and really, if we look at the wild
rapt earnestness with which it was believed and laid to heart,
I should say a better kind than that of those miserable Syrian
Sects, with their vain janglings about Homoiousion and
Homoousion, the head full of worthless noise, the heart empty
and dead! The truth of it is embedded in portentous error
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and falsehood; but the truth of it makes it be believed, not
the falsehood: it succeeded by its truth. A bastard kind of
Christianity, but a living kind; with a heart-life in it; not dead,
chopping barren logic merely! Out of all that rubbish of Arab
idolatries, argumentative theologies, traditions, subtleties,
rumors and hypotheses of Greeks and Jews, with their idle
wire-drawings, this wild man of the Desert, with his wild
sincere heart, earnest as death and life, with his great flashing
natural eyesight, had seen into the kernel of the matter. Idola-
soever it came to them, I say it was well worthy of being
believed. In one form or the other, I say it is still the one thing
worthy of being believed by all men. Man does hereby become the high-priest of this Temple of a World. He is in
harmony with the Decrees of the Author of this World; cooperating with them, not vainly withstanding them: I know,
to this day, no better definition of Duty than that same. All
that is right includes itself in this of co-operating with the real
Tendency of the World: you succeed by this (the World’s Ten-
try is nothing: these Wooden Idols of yours, “ye rub them
with oil and wax, and the flies stick on them,”—these are
wood, I tell you! They can do nothing for you; they are an
impotent blasphemous presence; a horror and abomination,
if ye knew them. God alone is; God alone has power; He
made us, He can kill us and keep us alive: “Allah akbar, God
is great.” Understand that His will is the best for you; that
howsoever sore to flesh and blood, you will find it the wisest,
best: you are bound to take it so; in this world and in the
next, you have no other thing that you can do!
And now if the wild idolatrous men did believe this, and
with their fiery hearts lay hold of it to do it, in what form
dency will succeed), you are good, and in the right course
there. Homoiousion, Homoousion, vain logical jangle, then or
before or at any time, may jangle itself out, and go whither
and how it likes: this is the thing it all struggles to mean, if it
would mean anything. If it do not succeed in meaning this, it
means nothing. Not that Abstractions, logical Propositions,
be correctly worded or incorrectly; but that living concrete
Sons of Adam do lay this to heart: that is the important point.
Islam devoured all these vain jangling Sects; and I think had
right to do so. It was a Reality, direct from the great Heart of
Nature once more. Arab idolatries, Syrian formulas, whatsoever was not equally real, had to go up in flame,—mere dead
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fuel, in various senses, for this which was fire.
It was during these wild warfarings and strugglings, especially after the Flight to Mecca, that Mahomet dictated at
intervals his Sacred Book, which they name Koran, or Reading, “Thing to be read.” This is the Work he and his disciples
made so much of, asking all the world, Is not that a miracle?
The Mahometans regard their Koran with a reverence which
few Christians pay even to their Bible. It is admitted every
where as the standard of all law and all practice; the thing to
also can read the Koran; our Translation of it, by Sale, is known
to be a very fair one. I must say, it is as toilsome reading as I
ever undertook. A wearisome confused jumble, crude,
incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement;
most crude, incondite;—insupportable stupidity, in short!
Nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through
the Koran. We read in it, as we might in the State-Paper Office, unreadable masses of lumber, that perhaps we may get
some glimpses of a remarkable man. It is true we have it un-
be gone upon in speculation and life; the message sent direct
out of Heaven, which this Earth has to conform to, and walk
by; the thing to be read. Their Judges decide by it; all Moslem are bound to study it, seek in it for the light of their life.
They have mosques where it is all read daily; thirty relays of
priests take it up in succession, get through the whole each
day. There, for twelve hundred years, has the voice of this
Book, at all moments, kept sounding through the ears and
the hearts of so many men. We hear of Mahometan Doctors
that had read it seventy thousand times!
Very curious: if one sought for “discrepancies of national
taste,” here surely were the most eminent instance of that! We
der disadvantages: the Arabs see more method in it than we.
Mahomet’s followers found the Koran lying all in fractions,
as it had been written down at first promulgation; much of
it, they say, on shoulder-blades of mutton, flung pell-mell
into a chest: and they published it, without any discoverable
order as to time or otherwise;—merely trying, as would seem,
and this not very strictly, to put the longest chapters first.
The real beginning of it, in that way, lies almost at the end:
for the earliest portions were the shortest. Read in its historical sequence it perhaps would not be so bad. Much of it, too,
they say, is rhythmic; a kind of wild chanting song, in the
original. This may be a great point; much perhaps has been
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lost in the Translation here. Yet with every allowance, one
feels it difficult to see how any mortal ever could consider
this Koran as a Book written in Heaven, too good for the
Earth; as a well-written book, or indeed as a book at all; and
not a bewildered rhapsody; written, so far as writing goes, as
badly as almost any book ever was! So much for national
discrepancies, and the standard of taste.
Yet I should say, it was not unintelligible how the Arabs
might so love it. When once you get this confused coil of a
can make nothing of the critic, in these times, who would
accuse him of deceit prepense; of conscious deceit generally,
or perhaps at all;—still more, of living in a mere element of
conscious deceit, and writing this Koran as a forger and juggler would have done! Every candid eye, I think, will read the
Koran far otherwise than so. It is the confused ferment of a
great rude human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read;
but fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in
words. With a kind of breathless intensity he strives to utter
Koran fairly off your hands, and have it behind you at a distance, the essential type of it begins to disclose itself; and in
this there is a merit quite other than the literary one. If a
book come from the heart, it will contrive to reach other
hearts; all art and author-craft are of small amount to that.
One would say the primary character of the Koran is this of
its genuineness, of its being a bona-fide book. Prideaux, I know,
and others have represented it as a mere bundle of juggleries;
chapter after chapter got up to excuse and varnish the author’s
successive sins, forward his ambitions and quackeries: but really it is time to dismiss all that. I do not assert Mahomet’s
continual sincerity: who is continually sincere? But I confess I
himself; the thoughts crowd on him pell-mell: for very multitude of things to say, he can get nothing said. The meaning
that is in him shapes itself into no form of composition, is
stated in no sequence, method, or coherence;—they are not
shaped at all, these thoughts of his; flung out unshaped, as
they struggle and tumble there, in their chaotic inarticulate
state. We said “stupid:” yet natural stupidity is by no means
the character of Mahomet’s Book; it is natural uncultivation
rather. The man has not studied speaking; in the haste and
pressure of continual fighting, has not time to mature himself into fit speech. The panting breathless haste and vehemence of a man struggling in the thick of battle for life and
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salvation; this is the mood he is in! A headlong haste; for very
magnitude of meaning, he cannot get himself articulated into
words. The successive utterances of a soul in that mood, colored by the various vicissitudes of three-and-twenty years; now
well uttered, now worse: this is the Koran.
For we are to consider Mahomet, through these three-andtwenty years, as the centre of a world wholly in conflict. Battles
with the Koreish and Heathen, quarrels among his own people,
backslidings of his own wild heart; all this kept him in a per-
without eyes or heart, practicing for a mess of pottage such
blasphemous swindlery, forgery of celestial documents, continual high-treason against his Maker and Self, we will not
and cannot take him.
Sincerity, in all senses, seems to me the merit of the Koran;
what had rendered it precious to the wild Arab men. It is,
after all, the first and last merit in a book; gives rise to merits
of all kinds,—nay, at bottom, it alone can give rise to merit
of any kind. Curiously, through these incondite masses of
petual whirl, his soul knowing rest no more. In wakeful nights,
as one may fancy, the wild soul of the man, tossing amid
these vortices, would hail any light of a decision for them as a
veritable light from Heaven; any making-up of his mind, so
blessed, indispensable for him there, would seem the inspiration of a Gabriel. Forger and juggler? No, no! This great fiery
heart, seething, simmering like a great furnace of thoughts,
was not a juggler’s. His Life was a Fact to him; this God’s
Universe an awful Fact and Reality. He has faults enough.
The man was an uncultured semi-barbarous Son of Nature,
much of the Bedouin still clinging to him: we must take him
for that. But for a wretched Simulacrum, a hungry Impostor
tradition, vituperation, complaint, ejaculation in the Koran,
a vein of true direct insight, of what we might almost call
poetry, is found straggling. The body of the Book is made up
of mere tradition, and as it were vehement enthusiastic extempore preaching. He returns forever to the old stories of
the Prophets as they went current in the Arab memory: how
Prophet after Prophet, the Prophet Abraham, the Prophet
Hud, the Prophet Moses, Christian and other real and fabulous Prophets, had come to this Tribe and to that, warning
men of their sin; and been received by them even as he
Mahomet was,—which is a great solace to him. These things
he repeats ten, perhaps twenty times; again and ever again,
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with wearisome iteration; has never done repeating them. A
brave Samuel Johnson, in his forlorn garret, might con over
the Biographies of Authors in that way! This is the great staple
of the Koran. But curiously, through all this, comes ever and
anon some glance as of the real thinker and seer. He has actually an eye for the world, this Mahomet: with a certain directness and rugged vigor, he brings home still, to our heart, the
thing his own heart has been opened to. I make but little of
his praises of Allah, which many praise; they are borrowed I
work of Allah; wholly “a sign to you,” if your eyes were open!
This Earth, God made it for you; “appointed paths in it;”
you can live in it, go to and fro on it.—The clouds in the dry
country of Arabia, to Mahomet they are very wonderful: Great
clouds, he says, born in the deep bosom of the Upper Immensity, where do they come from! They hang there, the great
black monsters; pour down their rain-deluges “to revive a dead
earth,” and grass springs, and “tall leafy palm-trees with their
date-clusters hanging round. Is not that a sign?” Your cattle
suppose mainly from the Hebrew, at least they are far surpassed there. But the eye that flashes direct into the heart of
things, and sees the truth of them; this is to me a highly interesting object. Great Nature’s own gift; which she bestows on
all; but which only one in the thousand does not cast sorrowfully away: it is what I call sincerity of vision; the test of a
sincere heart.
Mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: I can work no miracles. I? “I am a Public Preacher;”
appointed to preach this doctrine to all creatures. Yet the world,
as we can see, had really from of old been all one great miracle
to him. Look over the world, says he; is it not wonderful, the
too,—Allah made them; serviceable dumb creatures; they
change the grass into milk; you have your clothing from them,
very strange creatures; they come ranking home at eveningtime, “and,” adds he, “and are a credit to you!” Ships also,—
he talks often about ships: Huge moving mountains, they
spread out their cloth wings, go bounding through the water
there, Heaven’s wind driving them; anon they lie motionless,
God has withdrawn the wind, they lie dead, and cannot stir!
Miracles? cries he: What miracle would you have? Are not
you yourselves there? God made you, “shaped you out of a
little clay.” Ye were small once; a few years ago ye were not at
all. Ye have beauty, strength, thoughts, “ye have compassion
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on one another.” Old age comes on you, and gray hairs; your
strength fades into feebleness; ye sink down, and again are
not. “Ye have compassion on one another:” this struck me
much: Allah might have made you having no compassion on
one another,—how had it been then! This is a great direct
thought, a glance at first-hand into the very fact of things.
Rude vestiges of poetic genius, of whatsoever is best and truest, are visible in this man. A strong untutored intellect; eyesight, heart: a strong wild man,—might have shaped himself
tains are set on that to steady it. At the Last Day they shall
disappear “like clouds;” the whole Earth shall go spinning,
whirl itself off into wreck, and as dust and vapor vanish in the
Inane. Allah withdraws his hand from it, and it ceases to be.
The universal empire of Allah, presence everywhere of an unspeakable Power, a Splendor, and a Terror not to be named, as
the true force, essence and reality, in all things whatsoever,
was continually clear to this man. What a modern talks of by
the name, Forces of Nature, Laws of Nature; and does not
into Poet, King, Priest, any kind of Hero.
To his eyes it is forever clear that this world wholly is miraculous. He sees what, as we said once before, all great thinkers, the rude Scandinavians themselves, in one way or other,
have contrived to see: That this so solid-looking material world
is, at bottom, in very deed, Nothing; is a visual and factual
Manifestation of God’s power and presence,—a shadow hung
out by Him on the bosom of the void Infinite; nothing more.
The mountains, he says, these great rock-mountains, they shall
dissipate themselves “like clouds;” melt into the Blue as clouds
do, and not be! He figures the Earth, in the Arab fashion, Sale
tells us, as an immense Plain or flat Plate of ground, the moun-
figure as a divine thing; not even as one thing at all, but as a
set of things, undivine enough,—salable, curious, good for
propelling steamships! With our Sciences and Cyclopaedias,
we are apt to forget the divineness, in those laboratories of
ours. We ought not to forget it! That once well forgotten, I
know not what else were worth remembering. Most sciences,
I think were then a very dead thing; withered, contentious,
empty;—a thistle in late autumn. The best science, without
this, is but as the dead timber; it is not the growing tree and
forest,—which gives ever-new timber, among other things!
Man cannot know either, unless he can worship in some way.
His knowledge is a pedantry, and dead thistle, otherwise.
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Much has been said and written about the sensuality of
Mahomet’s Religion; more than was just. The indulgences,
criminal to us, which he permitted, were not of his appointment; he found them practiced, unquestioned from immemorial time in Arabia; what he did was to curtail them, restrict them, not on one but on many sides. His Religion is
not an easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex
formulas, prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine,
it did not “succeed by being an easy religion.” As if indeed any
gation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the
heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a
flame that burns up all lower considerations. Not happiness,
but something higher: one sees this even in the frivolous classes,
with their “point of honor” and the like. Not by flattering
our appetites; no, by awakening the Heroic that slumbers in
every heart, can any Religion gain followers.
Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was
not a sensual man. We shall err widely if we consider this man
religion, or cause holding of religion, could succeed by that!
It is a calumny on men to say that they are roused to heroic
action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense,—sugar-plums
of any kind, in this world or the next! In the meanest mortal
there lies something nobler. The poor swearing soldier, hired
to be shot, has his “honor of a soldier,” different from drillregulations and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things,
but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under
God’s Heaven as a god-made Man, that the poorest son of
Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the
dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man
greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abne-
as a common voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments,—
nay on enjoyments of any kind. His household was of the
frugalest; his common diet barley-bread and water: sometimes
for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth.
They record with just pride that he would mend his own
shoes, patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided
man; careless of what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I
should say; something better in him than hunger of any sort,—
or these wild Arab men, fighting and jostling three-and-twenty
years at his hand, in close contact with him always, would
not have reverenced him so! They were wild men, bursting
ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity;
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without right worth and manhood, no man could have commanded them. They called him Prophet, you say? Why, he
stood there face to face with them; bare, not enshrined in any
mystery; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own
shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them:
they must have seen what kind of a man he was, let him be
called what you like! No emperor with his tiaras was obeyed
as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. During three-andtwenty years of rough actual trial. I find something of a veri-
had done his Master’s work, Seid had now gone to his Master: it was all well with Seid. Yet Seid’s daughter found him
weeping over the body;—the old gray-haired man melting in
tears! “What do I see?” said she.—”You see a friend weeping
over his friend.”—He went out for the last time into the
mosque, two days before his death; asked, If he had injured
any man? Let his own back bear the stripes. If he owed any
man? A voice answered, “Yes, me three drachms,” borrowed
on such an occasion. Mahomet ordered them to be paid: “Bet-
table Hero necessary for that, of itself.
His last words are a prayer; broken ejaculations of a heart
struggling up, in trembling hope, towards its Maker. We cannot say that his religion made him worse; it made him better;
good, not bad. Generous things are recorded of him: when
he lost his Daughter, the thing he answers is, in his own dialect, every way sincere, and yet equivalent to that of Christians, “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be
the name of the Lord.” He answered in like manner of Seid,
his emancipated well-beloved Slave, the second of the believers. Seid had fallen in the War of Tabuc, the first of Mahomet’s
fightings with the Greeks. Mahomet said, It was well; Seid
ter be in shame now,” said he, “than at the Day of Judgment.”—You remember Kadijah, and the “No, by Allah!”
Traits of that kind show us the genuine man, the brother of
us all, brought visible through twelve centuries,—the veritable Son of our common Mother.
Withal I like Mahomet for his total freedom from cant.
He is a rough self-helping son of the wilderness; does not
pretend to be what he is not. There is no ostentatious pride in
him; but neither does he go much upon humility: he is there
as he can be, in cloak and shoes of his own clouting; speaks
plainly to all manner of Persian Kings, Greek Emperors, what
it is they are bound to do; knows well enough, about him63
Thomas Carlyle
self, “the respect due unto thee.” In a life-and-death war with
Bedouins, cruel things could not fail; but neither are acts of
mercy, of noble natural pity and generosity wanting. Mahomet
makes no apology for the one, no boast of the other. They
were each the free dictate of his heart; each called for, there
and then. Not a mealy-mouthed man! A candid ferocity, if
the case call for it, is in him; he does not mince matters! The
War of Tabuc is a thing he often speaks of: his men refused,
many of them, to march on that occasion; pleaded the heat
robation and Salvation with him, of Time and Eternity: he is
in deadly earnest about it! Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth: this is the sorest sin. The root of all other
imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul of the man
never having been open to Truth;—”living in a vain show.”
Such a man not only utters and produces falsehoods, but is
himself a falsehood. The rational moral principle, spark of
the Divinity, is sunk deep in him, in quiet paralysis of life-
of the weather, the harvest, and so forth; he can never forget
that. Your harvest? It lasts for a day. What will become of
your harvest through all Eternity? Hot weather? Yes, it was
hot; “but Hell will be hotter!” Sometimes a rough sarcasm
turns up: He says to the unbelievers, Ye shall have the just
measure of your deeds at that Great Day. They will be weighed
out to you; ye shall not have short weight!—Everywhere he
fixes the matter in his eye; he sees it: his heart, now and then,
is as if struck dumb by the greatness of it. “Assuredly,” he says:
that word, in the Koran, is written down sometimes as a sentence by itself: “Assuredly.”
No Dilettantism in this Mahomet; it is a business of Rep-
death. The very falsehoods of Mahomet are truer than the
truths of such a man. He is the insincere man: smooth-polished, respectable in some times and places; inoffensive, says
nothing harsh to anybody; most cleanly,—just as carbonic
acid is, which is death and poison.
We will not praise Mahomet’s moral precepts as always of
the superfinest sort; yet it can be said that there is always a
tendency to good in them; that they are the true dictates of a
heart aiming towards what is just and true. The sublime forgiveness of Christianity, turning of the other cheek when the
one has been smitten, is not here: you are to revenge yourself,
but it is to be in measure, not overmuch, or beyond justice.
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On the other hand, Islam, like any great Faith, and insight
into the essence of man, is a perfect equalizer of men: the soul
of one believer outweighs all earthly kingships; all men, according to Islam too, are equal. Mahomet insists not on the
propriety of giving alms, but on the necessity of it: he marks
down by law how much you are to give, and it is at your peril
if you neglect. The tenth part of a man’s annual income, whatever that may be, is the property of the poor, of those that are
afflicted and need help. Good all this: the natural voice of
joys. He says, “Your salutation shall be, Peace.” Salam, Have
Peace!—the thing that all rational souls long for, and seek,
vainly here below, as the one blessing. “Ye shall sit on seats,
facing one another: all grudges shall be taken away out of
your hearts.” All grudges! Ye shall love one another freely; for
each of you, in the eyes of his brothers, there will be Heaven
enough!
In reference to this of the sensual Paradise and Mahomet’s
sensuality, the sorest chapter of all for us, there were many
humanity, of pity and equity dwelling in the heart of this
wild Son of Nature speaks so.
Mahomet’s Paradise is sensual, his Hell sensual: true; in the
one and the other there is enough that shocks all spiritual
feeling in us. But we are to recollect that the Arabs already
had it so; that Mahomet, in whatever he changed of it, softened and diminished all this. The worst sensualities, too, are
the work of doctors, followers of his, not his work. In the
Koran there is really very little said about the joys of Paradise;
they are intimated rather than insisted on. Nor is it forgotten
that the highest joys even there shall be spiritual; the pure
Presence of the Highest, this shall infinitely transcend all other
things to be said; which it is not convenient to enter upon
here. Two remarks only I shall make, and therewith leave it to
your candor. The first is furnished me by Goethe; it is a casual hint of his which seems well worth taking note of. In
one of his Delineations, in Meister’s Travels it is, the hero comes
upon a Society of men with very strange ways, one of which
was this: “We require,” says the Master, “that each of our people
shall restrict himself in one direction,” shall go right against
his desire in one matter, and make himself do the thing he
does not wish, “should we allow him the greater latitude on
all other sides.” There seems to me a great justness in this.
Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is
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the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is. Let
a man assert withal that he is king over his habitudes; that he
could and would shake them off, on cause shown: this is an
excellent law. The Month Ramadhan for the Moslem, much
in Mahomet’s Religion, much in his own Life, bears in that
direction; if not by forethought, or clear purpose of moral
improvement on his part, then by a certain healthy manful
instinct, which is as good.
But there is another thing to be said about the Mahometan
fearfully and wonderfully hidden: all this had burnt itself, as
in flame-characters, into the wild Arab soul. As in flame and
lightning, it stands written there; awful, unspeakable, ever
present to him. With bursting earnestness, with a fierce savage sincerity, half-articulating, not able to articulate, he strives
to speak it, bodies it forth in that Heaven and that Hell. Bodied forth in what way you will, it is the first of all truths. It is
venerable under all embodiments. What is the chief end of
man here below? Mahomet has answered this question, in a
Heaven and Hell. This namely, that, however gross and material they may be, they are an emblem of an everlasting truth,
not always so well remembered elsewhere. That gross sensual
Paradise of his; that horrible flaming Hell; the great enormous Day of Judgment he perpetually insists on: what is all
this but a rude shadow, in the rude Bedouin imagination, of
that grand spiritual Fact, and Beginning of Facts, which it is
ill for us too if we do not all know and feel: the Infinite
Nature of Duty? That man’s actions here are of infinite moment to him, and never die or end at all; that man, with his
little life, reaches upwards high as Heaven, downwards low as
Hell, and in his threescore years of Time holds an Eternity
way that might put some of us to shame! He does not, like a
Bentham, a Paley, take Right and Wrong, and calculate the
profit and loss, ultimate pleasure of the one and of the other;
and summing all up by addition and subtraction into a net
result, ask you, Whether on the whole the Right does not
preponderate considerably? No; it is not better to do the one
than the other; the one is to the other as life is to death,—as
Heaven is to Hell. The one must in nowise be done, the other
in nowise left undone. You shall not measure them; they are
incommensurable: the one is death eternal to a man, the other
is life eternal. Benthamee Utility, virtue by Profit and Loss;
reducing this God’s-world to a dead brute Steam-engine, the
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infinite celestial Soul of Man to a kind of Hay-balance for
weighing hay and thistles on, pleasures and pains on:—If you
ask me which gives, Mahomet or they, the beggarlier and falser
view of Man and his Destinies in this Universe, I will answer,
it is not Mahomet!—
On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion of
Mahomet’s is a kind of Christianity; has a genuine element of
what is spiritually highest looking through it, not to be hidden by all its imperfections. The Scandinavian God Wish, the
as the Moslem do by theirs,—believing it wholly, fronting Time
with it, and Eternity with it. This night the watchman on the
streets of Cairo when he cries, “Who goes? “ will hear from the
passenger, along with his answer, “There is no God but God.”
Allah akbar, Islam, sounds through the souls, and whole daily
existence, of these dusky millions. Zealous missionaries preach
it abroad among Malays, black Papuans, brutal Idolaters;—
displacing what is worse, nothing that is better or good.
To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into
god of all rude men,—this has been enlarged into a Heaven
by Mahomet; but a Heaven symbolical of sacred Duty, and
to be earned by faith and well-doing, by valiant action, and a
divine patience which is still more valiant. It is Scandinavian
Paganism, and a truly celestial element superadded to that.
Call it not false; look not at the falsehood of it, look at the
truth of it. For these twelve centuries, it has been the religion
and life-guidance of the fifth part of the whole kindred of
Mankind. Above all things, it has been a religion heartily believed. These Arabs believe their religion, and try to live by it!
No Christians, since the early ages, or only perhaps the English Puritans in modern times, have ever stood by their Faith
light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a Hero-Prophet was sent down to them
with a word they could believe: see, the unnoticed becomes
world-notable, the small has grown world-great; within one
century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on this hand, at Delhi
on that;—glancing in valor and splendor and the light of genius, Arabia shines through long ages over a great section of
the world. Belief is great, life-giving. The history of a Nation
becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon as it believes.
These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century,—is it
not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what
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[May 12, 1840.]
seemed black unnoticeable sand; but lo, the sand proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Grenada! I
said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven;
the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too
would flame.
LECTURE III.
THE HERO AS POET. DANTE:
SHAKSPEARE.
T
HE HERO AS DIVINITY, the Hero as Prophet, are pro-
ductions of old ages; not to be repeated in the new.
They presuppose a certain rudeness of conception,
which the progress of mere scientific knowledge puts an end
to. There needs to be, as it were, a world vacant, or almost
vacant of scientific forms, if men in their loving wonder are
to fancy their fellow-man either a god or one speaking with
the voice of a god. Divinity and Prophet are past. We are now
to see our Hero in the less ambitious, but also less questionable, character of Poet; a character which does not pass. The
Poet is a heroic figure belonging to all ages; whom all ages
possess, when once he is produced, whom the newest age as
the oldest may produce;—and will produce, always when
Nature pleases. Let Nature send a Hero-soul; in no age is it
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other than possible that he may be shaped into a Poet.
Hero, Prophet, Poet,—many different names, in different
times, and places, do we give to Great Men; according to
varieties we note in them, according to the sphere in which
they have displayed themselves! We might give many more
names, on this same principle. I will remark again, however,
as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different
sphere constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that
the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will,
education led him thitherward. The grand fundamental character is that of Great Man; that the man be great. Napoleon
has words in him which are like Austerlitz Battles. Louis
Fourteenth’s Marshals are a kind of poetical men withal; the
things Turenne says are full of sagacity and geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. The great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye: there it lies; no man whatever, in what province soever,
can prosper at all without these. Petrarch and Boccaccio did
diplomatic messages, it seems, quite well: one can easily be-
according to the kind of world he finds himself born into. I
confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not
be all sorts of men. The Poet who could merely sit on a chair,
and compose stanzas, would never make a stanza worth much.
He could not sing the Heroic warrior, unless he himself were
at least a Heroic warrior too. I fancy there is in him the Politician, the Thinker, Legislator, Philosopher;—in one or the
other degree, he could have been, he is all these. So too I
cannot understand how a Mirabeau, with that great glowing
heart, with the fire that was in it, with the bursting tears that
were in it, could not have written verses, tragedies, poems,
and touched all hearts in that way, had his course of life and
lieve it; they had done things a little harder than these! Burns,
a gifted song-writer, might have made a still better Mirabeau.
Shakspeare,—one knows not what he could not have made,
in the supreme degree.
True, there are aptitudes of Nature too. Nature does not
make all great men, more than all other men, in the self-same
mould. Varieties of aptitude doubtless; but infinitely more
of circumstance; and far oftenest it is the latter only that are
looked to. But it is as with common men in the learning of
trades. You take any man, as yet a vague capability of a man,
who could be any kind of craftsman; and make him into a
smith, a carpenter, a mason: he is then and thenceforth that
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and nothing else. And if, as Addison complains, you sometimes see a street-porter, staggering under his load on spindleshanks, and near at hand a tailor with the frame of a Samson
handling a bit of cloth and small Whitechapel needle,—it
cannot be considered that aptitude of Nature alone has been
consulted here either!—The Great Man also, to what shall he
be bound apprentice? Given your Hero, is he to become Conqueror, King, Philosopher, Poet? It is an inexplicably complex controversial-calculation between the world and him! He
the great secret?” asks one.—”The open secret,”—open to all,
seen by almost none! That divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, “the Divine Idea of the World, that which
lies at the bottom of Appearance,” as Fichte styles it; of which
all Appearance, from the starry sky to the grass of the field,
but especially the Appearance of Man and his work, is but the
vesture, the embodiment that renders it visible. This divine
mystery is in all times and in all places; veritably is. In most
times and places it is greatly overlooked; and the Universe,
will read the world and its laws; the world with its laws will
be there to be read. What the world, on this matter, shall
permit and bid is, as we said, the most important fact about
the world.—
Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern notions of them. In some old languages, again, the titles are
synonymous; Vates means both Prophet and Poet: and indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, well understood, have
much kindred of meaning. Fundamentally indeed they are
still the same; in this most important respect especially, That
they have penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery of
the Universe; what Goethe calls “the open secret.” “Which is
definable always in one or the other dialect, as the realized
Thought of God, is considered a trivial, inert, commonplace
matter,—as if, says the Satirist, it were a dead thing, which
some upholsterer had put together! It could do no good, at
present, to speak much about this; but it is a pity for every
one of us if we do not know it, live ever in the knowledge of
it. Really a most mournful pity;—a failure to live at all, if we
live otherwise!
But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, the
Vates, whether Prophet or Poet, has penetrated into it; is a
man sent hither to make it more impressively known to us.
That always is his message; he is to reveal that to us,—that
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sacred mystery which he more than others lives ever present
with. While others forget it, he knows it;—I might say, he
has been driven to know it; without consent asked of him, he
finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. Once more, here
is no Hearsay, but a direct Insight and Belief; this man too
could not help being a sincere man! Whosoever may live in
the shows of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live
in the very fact of things. A man once more, in earnest with
the Universe, though all others were but toying with it. He is
field; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet Solomon in all
his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” A glance, that,
into the deepest deep of Beauty. “The lilies of the field,”—
dressed finer than earthly princes, springing up there in the
humble furrow-field; a beautiful eye looking out on you, from
the great inner Sea of Beauty! How could the rude Earth make
these, if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not
inwardly Beauty? In this point of view, too, a saying of
Goethe’s, which has staggered several, may have meaning: “The
a Vates, first of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far Poet and
Prophet, participators in the “open secret,” are one.
With respect to their distinction again: The Vates Prophet,
we might say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on the
moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty and Prohibition; the Vates
Poet on what the Germans call the aesthetic side, as Beautiful, and the like. The one we may call a revealer of what we
are to do, the other of what we are to love. But indeed these
two provinces run into one another, and cannot be disjoined.
The Prophet too has his eye on what we are to love: how else
shall he know what it is we are to do? The highest Voice ever
heard on this earth said withal, “Consider the lilies of the
Beautiful,” he intimates, “is higher than the Good; the Beautiful includes in it the Good.” The true Beautiful; which however, I have said somewhere, “differs from the false as Heaven
does from Vauxhall!” So much for the distinction and identity of Poet and Prophet.—
In ancient and also in modern periods we find a few Poets
who are accounted perfect; whom it were a kind of treason to
find fault with. This is noteworthy; this is right: yet in strictness it is only an illusion. At bottom, clearly enough, there is
no perfect Poet! A vein of Poetry exists in the hearts of all
men; no man is made altogether of Poetry. We are all poets
when we read a poem well. The “imagination that shudders
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at the Hell of Dante,” is not that the same faculty, weaker in
degree, as Dante’s own? No one but Shakspeare can embody,
out of Saxo Grammaticus, the story of Hamlet as Shakspeare
did: but every one models some kind of story out of it; every
one embodies it better or worse. We need not spend time in
defining. Where there is no specific difference, as between
round and square, all definition must be more or less arbitrary. A man that has so much more of the poetic element
developed in him as to have become noticeable, will be called
pecially by late German Critics, some of which are not very
intelligible at first. They say, for example, that the Poet has an
infinitude in him; communicates an Unendlichkeit, a certain
character of “infinitude,” to whatsoever he delineates. This,
though not very precise, yet on so vague a matter is worth
remembering: if well meditated, some meaning will gradually be found in it. For my own part, I find considerable
meaning in the old vulgar distinction of Poetry being metrical, having music in it, being a Song. Truly, if pressed to give
Poet by his neighbors. World-Poets too, those whom we are
to take for perfect Poets, are settled by critics in the same way.
One who rises so far above the general level of Poets will, to
such and such critics, seem a Universal Poet; as he ought to
do. And yet it is, and must be, an arbitrary distinction. All
Poets, all men, have some touches of the Universal; no man is
wholly made of that. Most Poets are very soon forgotten: but
not the noblest Shakspeare or Homer of them can be remembered forever;—a day comes when he too is not!
Nevertheless, you will say, there must be a difference between true Poetry and true Speech not poetical: what is the
difference? On this point many things have been written, es-
a definition, one might say this as soon as anything else: If
your delineation be authentically musical, musical not in word
only, but in heart and substance, in all the thoughts and utterances of it, in the whole conception of it, then it will be poetical; if not, not.—Musical: how much lies in that! A musical thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into
the inmost heart of the thing; detected the inmost mystery of
it, namely the melody that lies hidden in it; the inward harmony of coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists, and
has a right to be, here in this world. All inmost things, we
may say, are melodious; naturally utter themselves in Song.
The meaning of Song goes deep. Who is there that, in logical
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words, can express the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of
the Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that!
Nay all speech, even the commonest speech, has something
of song in it: not a parish in the world but has its parishaccent;—the rhythm or tune to which the people there sing
what they have to say! Accent is a kind of chanting; all men
have accent of their own,—though they only notice that of
others. Observe too how all passionate language does of itself
being everywhere music, if you can only reach it.
The Vates Poet, with his melodious Apocalypse of Nature,
seems to hold a poor rank among us, in comparison with the
Vates Prophet; his function, and our esteem of him for his
function, alike slight. The Hero taken as Divinity; the Hero
taken as Prophet; then next the Hero taken only as Poet: does
it not look as if our estimate of the Great Man, epoch after
epoch, were continually diminishing? We take him first for a
god, then for one god-inspired; and now in the next stage of
become musical,—with a finer music than the mere accent;
the speech of a man even in zealous anger becomes a chant, a
song. All deep things are Song. It seems somehow the very
central essence of us, Song; as if all the rest were but wrappages
and hulls! The primal element of us; of us, and of all things.
The Greeks fabled of Sphere-Harmonies: it was the feeling
they had of the inner structure of Nature; that the soul of all
her voices and utterances was perfect music. Poetry, therefore,
we will call musical Thought. The Poet is he who thinks in
that manner. At bottom, it turns still on power of intellect; it
is a man’s sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet.
See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature
it, his most miraculous word gains from us only the recognition that he is a Poet, beautiful verse-maker, man of genius,
or such like!—It looks so; but I persuade myself that intrinsically it is not so. If we consider well, it will perhaps appear
that in man still there is the same altogether peculiar admiration for the Heroic Gift, by what name soever called, that
here at any time was.
I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great Man literally
divine, it is that our notions of God, of the supreme unattainable Fountain of Splendor, Wisdom and Heroism, are
ever rising higher; not altogether that our reverence for these
qualities, as manifested in our like, is getting lower. This is
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worth taking thought of. Sceptical Dilettantism, the curse of
these ages, a curse which will not last forever, does indeed in
this the highest province of human things, as in all provinces,
make sad work; and our reverence for great men, all crippled,
blinded, paralytic as it is, comes out in poor plight, hardly
recognizable. Men worship the shows of great men; the most
disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship.
The dreariest, fatalest faith; believing which, one would literally despair of human things. Nevertheless look, for example,
cism, Triviality, and all that sorrowful brood, cast out of us,—
as, by God’s blessing, they shall one day be; were faith in the
shows of things entirely swept out, replaced by clear faith in
the things, so that a man acted on the impulse of that only,
and counted the other non-extant; what a new livelier feeling
towards this Burns were it!
Nay here in these ages, such as they are, have we not two
mere Poets, if not deified, yet we may say beatified? Shakspeare
and Dante are Saints of Poetry; really, if we will think of it,
at Napoleon! A Corsican lieutenant of artillery; that is the
show of him: yet is he not obeyed, worshipped after his sort,
as all the Tiaraed and Diademed of the world put together
could not be? High Duchesses, and ostlers of inns, gather round
the Scottish rustic, Burns;—a strange feeling dwelling in each
that they never heard a man like this; that, on the whole, this
is the man! In the secret heart of these people it still dimly
reveals itself, though there is no accredited way of uttering it
at present, that this rustic, with his black brows and flashing
sun-eyes, and strange words moving laughter and tears, is of a
dignity far beyond all others, incommensurable with all others. Do not we feel it so? But now, were Dilettantism, Scepti-
canonized, so that it is impiety to meddle with them. The
unguided instinct of the world, working across all these perverse impediments, has arrived at such result. Dante and
Shakspeare are a peculiar Two. They dwell apart, in a kind of
royal solitude; none equal, none second to them: in the general feeling of the world, a certain transcendentalism, a glory
as of complete perfection, invests these two. They are canonized, though no Pope or Cardinals took hand in doing it!
Such, in spite of every perverting influence, in the most unheroic times, is still our indestructible reverence for heroism.—
We will look a little at these Two, the Poet Dante and the
Poet Shakspeare: what little it is permitted us to say here of
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the Hero as Poet will most fitly arrange itself in that fashion.
Many volumes have been written by way of commentary
on Dante and his Book; yet, on the whole, with no great
result. His Biography is, as it were, irrecoverably lost for us.
An unimportant, wandering, sorrow-stricken man, not much
note was taken of him while he lived; and the most of that
has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes. It is five
centuries since he ceased writing and living here. After all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we know of him.
less pain. A soft ethereal soul looking out so stern, implacable, grim-trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed
ice! Withal it is a silent pain too, a silent scornful one: the lip
is curled in a kind of godlike disdain of the thing that is eating out his heart,—as if it were withal a mean insignificant
thing, as if he whom it had power to torture and strangle
were greater than it. The face of one wholly in protest, and
lifelong unsurrendering battle, against the world. Affection
all converted into indignation: an implacable indignation; slow,
The Book;—and one might add that Portrait commonly attributed to Giotto, which, looking on it, you cannot help
inclining to think genuine, whoever did it. To me it is a most
touching face; perhaps of all faces that I know, the most so.
Lonely there, painted as on vacancy, with the simple laurel
wound round it; the deathless sorrow and pain, the known
victory which is also deathless;—significant of the whole history of Dante! I think it is the mournfulest face that ever was
painted from reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face.
There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness,
gentle affection as of a child; but all this is as if congealed into
sharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud hope-
equable, silent, like that of a god! The eye too, it looks out as
in a kind of surprise, a kind of inquiry, Why the world was of
such a sort? This is Dante: so he looks, this “voice of ten silent
centuries,” and sings us “his mystic unfathomable song.”
The little that we know of Dante’s Life corresponds well
enough with this Portrait and this Book. He was born at
Florence, in the upper class of society, in the year 1265. His
education was the best then going; much school-divinity,
Aristotelean logic, some Latin classics,—no inconsiderable
insight into certain provinces of things: and Dante, with his
earnest intelligent nature, we need not doubt, learned better
than most all that was learnable. He has a clear cultivated
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understanding, and of great subtlety; this best fruit of education he had contrived to realize from these scholastics. He
knows accurately and well what lies close to him; but, in such
a time, without printed books or free intercourse, he could
not know well what was distant: the small clear light, most
luminous for what is near, breaks itself into singular chiaroscuro striking on what is far off. This was Dante’s learning
from the schools. In life, he had gone through the usual destinies; been twice out campaigning as a soldier for the
affection loved. She died: Dante himself was wedded; but it
seems not happily, far from happily. I fancy, the rigorous earnest man, with his keen excitabilities, was not altogether easy
to make happy.
We will not complain of Dante’s miseries: had all gone right
with him as he wished it, he might have been Prior, Podesta,
or whatsoever they call it, of Florence, well accepted among
neighbors,—and the world had wanted one of the most notable words ever spoken or sung. Florence would have had
Florentine State, been on embassy; had in his thirty-fifth year,
by natural gradation of talent and service, become one of the
Chief Magistrates of Florence. He had met in boyhood a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful little girl of his own age
and rank, and grown up thenceforth in partial sight of her, in
some distant intercourse with her. All readers know his graceful affecting account of this; and then of their being parted;
of her being wedded to another, and of her death soon after.
She makes a great figure in Dante’s Poem; seems to have made
a great figure in his life. Of all beings it might seem as if she,
held apart from him, far apart at last in the dim Eternity,
were the only one he had ever with his whole strength of
another prosperous Lord Mayor; and the ten dumb centuries
continued voiceless, and the ten other listening centuries (for
there will be ten of them and more) had no Divina Commedia
to hear! We will complain of nothing. A nobler destiny was
appointed for this Dante; and he, struggling like a man led
towards death and crucifixion, could not help fulfilling it.
Give him the choice of his happiness! He knew not, more
than we do, what was really happy, what was really miserable.
In Dante’s Priorship, the Guelf-Ghibelline, Bianchi-Neri,
or some other confused disturbances rose to such a height,
that Dante, whose party had seemed the stronger, was with
his friends cast unexpectedly forth into banishment; doomed
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thenceforth to a life of woe and wandering. His property was
all confiscated and more; he had the fiercest feeling that it was
entirely unjust, nefarious in the sight of God and man. He
tried what was in him to get reinstated; tried even by warlike
surprisal, with arms in his hand: but it would not do; bad
only had become worse. There is a record, I believe, still extant in the Florence Archives, dooming this Dante, wheresoever caught, to be burnt alive. Burnt alive; so it stands, they
say: a very curious civic document. Another curious docu-
him that being at Can della Scala’s court, and blamed one day
for his gloom and taciturnity, he answered in no courtier-like
way. Della Scala stood among his courtiers, with mimes and
buffoons (nebulones ac histriones) making him heartily merry;
when turning to Dante, he said: “Is it not strange, now, that
this poor fool should make himself so entertaining; while
you, a wise man, sit there day after day, and have nothing to
amuse us with at all?” Dante answered bitterly: “No, not
strange; your Highness is to recollect the Proverb, Like to
ment, some considerable number of years later, is a Letter of
Dante’s to the Florentine Magistrates, written in answer to a
milder proposal of theirs, that he should return on condition
of apologizing and paying a fine. He answers, with fixed stern
pride: “If I cannot return without calling myself guilty, I will
never return, nunquam revertar.”
For Dante there was now no home in this world. He wandered from patron to patron, from place to place; proving, in
his own bitter words, “How hard is the path, Come e duro
calle.” The wretched are not cheerful company. Dante, poor
and banished, with his proud earnest nature, with his moody
humors, was not a man to conciliate men. Petrarch reports of
Like;”—given the amuser, the amusee must also be given! Such
a man, with his proud silent ways, with his sarcasms and sorrows, was not made to succeed at court. By degrees, it came
to be evident to him that he had no longer any resting-place,
or hope of benefit, in this earth. The earthly world had cast
him forth, to wander, wander; no living heart to love him
now; for his sore miseries there was no solace here.
The deeper naturally would the Eternal World impress itself on him; that awful reality over which, after all, this Timeworld, with its Florences and banishments, only flutters as an
unreal shadow. Florence thou shalt never see: but Hell and
Purgatory and Heaven thou shalt surely see! What is Florence,
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Can della Scala, and the World and Life altogether? ETERNITY: thither, of a truth, not elsewhither, art thou and all
things bound! The great soul of Dante, homeless on earth,
made its home more and more in that awful other world.
Naturally his thoughts brooded on that, as on the one fact
important for him. Bodied or bodiless, it is the one fact important for all men:—but to Dante, in that age, it was bodied in fixed certainty of scientific shape; he no more doubted
of that Malebolge Pool, that it all lay there with its gloomy
tua stella,”—so could the Hero, in his forsakenness, in his
extreme need, still say to himself: “Follow thou thy star, thou
shalt not fail of a glorious haven!” The labor of writing, we
find, and indeed could know otherwise, was great and painful for him; he says, This Book, “which has made me lean for
many years.” Ah yes, it was won, all of it, with pain and sore
toil,—not in sport, but in grim earnest. His Book, as indeed
most good Books are, has been written, in many senses, with
his heart’s blood. It is his whole history, this Book. He died
circles, with its alti guai, and that he himself should see it,
than we doubt that we should see Constantinople if we went
thither. Dante’s heart, long filled with this, brooding over it
in speechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into
“mystic unfathomable song; “ and this his Divine Comedy,
the most remarkable of all modern Books, is the result.
It must have been a great solacement to Dante, and was, as
we can see, a proud thought for him at times, That he, here in
exile, could do this work; that no Florence, nor no man or
men, could hinder him from doing it, or even much help
him in doing it. He knew too, partly, that it was great; the
greatest a man could do. “If thou follow thy star, Se tu segui
after finishing it; not yet very old, at the age of fifty-six;—
broken-hearted rather, as is said. He lies buried in his deathcity Ravenna: Hic claudor Dantes patriis extorris ab oris. The
Florentines begged back his body, in a century after; the
Ravenna people would not give it. “Here am I Dante laid,
shut out from my native shores.”
I said, Dante’s Poem was a Song: it is Tieck who calls it “a
mystic unfathomable Song;” and such is literally the character of it. Coleridge remarks very pertinently somewhere, that
wherever you find a sentence musically worded, of true rhythm
and melody in the words, there is something deep and good
in the meaning too. For body and soul, word and idea, go
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strangely together here as everywhere. Song: we said before, it
was the Heroic of Speech! All old Poems, Homer’s and the
rest, are authentically Songs. I would say, in strictness, that all
right Poems are; that whatsoever is not sung is properly no
Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines,—to
the great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader,
for most part! What we wants to get at is the thought the man
had, if he had any: why should he twist it into jingle, if he
could speak it out plainly? It is only when the heart of him is
vocation in them for singing it. Precisely as we love the true
song, and are charmed by it as by something divine, so shall
we hate the false song, and account it a mere wooden noise, a
thing hollow, superfluous, altogether an insincere and offensive thing.
I give Dante my highest praise when I say of his Divine
Comedy that it is, in all senses, genuinely a Song. In the very
sound of it there is a canto fermo; it proceeds as by a chant.
The language, his simple terza rima, doubtless helped him in
rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him,
according to Coleridge’s remark, become musical by the greatness, depth and music of his thoughts, that we can give him
right to rhyme and sing; that we call him a Poet, and listen to
him as the Heroic of Speakers,—whose speech is Song. Pretenders to this are many; and to an earnest reader, I doubt, it
is for most part a very melancholy, not to say an insupportable business, that of reading rhyme! Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed;—it ought to have told us plainly,
without any jingle, what it was aiming at. I would advise all
men who can speak their thought, not to sing it; to understand that, in a serious time, among serious men, there is no
this. One reads along naturally with a sort of lilt. But I add,
that it could not be otherwise; for the essence and material of
the work are themselves rhythmic. Its depth, and rapt passion
and sincerity, makes it musical;—go deep enough, there is
music everywhere. A true inward symmetry, what one calls
an architectural harmony, reigns in it, proportionates it all:
architectural; which also partakes of the character of music.
The three kingdoms, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, look out
on one another like compartments of a great edifice; a great
supernatural world-cathedral, piled up there, stern, solemn,
awful; Dante’s World of Souls! It is, at bottom, the sincerest
of all Poems; sincerity, here too,, we find to be the measure of
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worth. It came deep out of the author’s heart of hearts; and it
goes deep, and through long generations, into ours. The people
of Verona, when they saw him on the streets, used to say,
“Eccovi l’ uom ch’ e stato all’ Inferno, See, there is the man that
was in Hell!” Ah yes, he had been in Hell;—in Hell enough,
in long severe sorrow and struggle; as the like of him is pretty
sure to have been. Commedias that come out divine are not
accomplished otherwise. Thought, true labor of any kind,
highest virtue itself, is it not the daughter of Pain? Born as
Perhaps one would say, intensity, with the much that depends on it, is the prevailing character of Dante’s genius. Dante
does not come before us as a large catholic mind; rather as a
narrow, and even sectarian mind: it is partly the fruit of his
age and position, but partly too of his own nature. His greatness has, in all senses, concentred itself into fiery emphasis
and depth. He is world-great not because he is worldwide,
but because he is world-deep. Through all objects he pierces
as it were down into the heart of Being. I know nothing so
out of the black whirlwind;—true effort, in fact, as of a captive struggling to free himself: that is Thought. In all ways we
are “to become perfect through suffering.”—But, as I say, no
work known to me is so elaborated as this of Dante’s. It has
all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. It had
made him “lean” for many years. Not the general whole only;
every compartment of it is worked out, with intense earnestness, into truth, into clear visuality. Each answers to the other;
each fits in its place, like a marble stone accurately hewn and
polished. It is the soul of Dante, and in this the soul of the
middle ages, rendered forever rhythmically visible there. No
light task; a right intense one: but a task which is done.
intense as Dante. Consider, for example, to begin with the
outermost development of his intensity, consider how he
paints. He has a great power of vision; seizes the very type of
a thing; presents that and nothing more. You remember that
first view he gets of the Hall of Dite: red pinnacle, red-hot
cone of iron glowing through the dim immensity of gloom;—
so vivid, so distinct, visible at once and forever! It is as an
emblem of the whole genius of Dante. There is a brevity, an
abrupt precision in him: Tacitus is not briefer, more condensed;
and then in Dante it seems a natural condensation, spontaneous to the man. One smiting word; and then there is silence,
nothing more said. His silence is more eloquent than words.
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It is strange with what a sharp decisive grace he snatches the
true likeness of a matter: cuts into the matter as with a pen of
fire. Plutus, the blustering giant, collapses at Virgil’s rebuke;
it is “as the sails sink, the mast being suddenly broken.” Or
that poor Brunetto Latini, with the cotto aspetto, “face baked,”
parched brown and lean; and the “fiery snow” that falls on
them there, a “fiery snow without wind,” slow, deliberate,
never-ending! Or the lids of those Tombs; square sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning Hall, each with its Soul in
man worth something; mark his manner of doing it, as very
characteristic of him. In the first place, he could not have
discerned the object at all, or seen the vital type of it, unless
he had, what we may call, sympathized with it,—had sympathy in him to bestow on objects. He must have been sincere
about it too; sincere and sympathetic: a man without worth
cannot give you the likeness of any object; he dwells in vague
outwardness, fallacy and trivial hearsay, about all objects. And
indeed may we not say that intellect altogether expresses itself
torment; the lids laid open there; they are to be shut at the Day
of Judgment, through Eternity. And how Farinata rises; and
how Cavalcante falls—at hearing of his Son, and the past tense
“fue”! The very movements in Dante have something brief;
swift, decisive, almost military. It is of the inmost essence of his
genius this sort of painting. The fiery, swift Italian nature of
the man, so silent, passionate, with its quick abrupt movements,
its silent “pale rages,” speaks itself in these things.
For though this of painting is one of the outermost developments of a man, it comes like all else from the essential
faculty of him; it is physiognomical of the whole man. Find
a man whose words paint you a likeness, you have found a
in this power of discerning what an object is? Whatsoever of
faculty a man’s mind may have will come out here. Is it even
of business, a matter to be done? The gifted man is he who
sees the essential point, and leaves all the rest aside as surplusage: it is his faculty too, the man of business’s faculty, that he
discern the true likeness, not the false superficial one, of the
thing he has got to work in. And how much of morality is in
the kind of insight we get of anything; “the eye seeing in all
things what it brought with it the faculty of seeing”! To the
mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced
they are yellow. Raphael, the Painters tell us, is the best of all
Portrait-painters withal. No most gifted eye can exhaust the
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significance of any object. In the commonest human face there
lies more than Raphael will take away with him.
Dante’s painting is not graphic only, brief, true, and of a
vividness as of fire in dark night; taken on the wider scale, it is
every way noble, and the outcome of a great soul. Francesca
and her Lover, what qualities in that! A thing woven as out of
rainbows, on a ground of eternal black. A small flute-voice of
infinite wail speaks there, into our very heart of hearts. A
touch of womanhood in it too: della bella persona, che mi fu
a man who does not know rigor cannot pity either. His very
pity will be cowardly, egoistic,—sentimentality, or little better. I know not in the world an affection equal to that of
Dante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love:
like the wail of Æolian harps, soft, soft; like a child’s young
heart;—and then that stern, sore-saddened heart! These
longings of his towards his Beatrice; their meeting together in
the Paradiso; his gazing in her pure transfigured eyes, her that
had been purified by death so long, separated from him so
tolta; and how, even in the Pit of woe, it is a solace that he
will never part from her! Saddest tragedy in these alti guai.
An the racking winds, in that aer bruno, whirl them away
again, to wail forever!—Strange to think: Dante was the friend
of this poor Francesca’s father; Francesca herself may have sat
upon the Poet’s knee, as a bright innocent little child. Infinite
pity, yet also infinite rigor of law: it is so Nature is made; it is
so Dante discerned that she was made. What a paltry notion
is that of his Divine Comedy’s being a poor splenetic impotent
terrestrial libel; putting those into Hell whom he could not
be avenged upon on earth! I suppose if ever pity, tender as a
mother’s, was in the heart of any man, it was in Dante’s. But
far:—one likens it to the song of angels; it is among the purest utterances of affection, perhaps the very purest, that ever
came out of a human soul.
For the intense Dante is intense in all things; he has got into
the essence of all. His intellectual insight as painter, on occasion too as reasoner, is but the result of all other sorts of intensity. Morally great, above all, we must call him; it is the
beginning of all. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his
love;—as indeed, what are they but the inverse or converse of
his love? “A Dio spiacenti ed a’ nemici sui, Hateful to God and
to the enemies of God: “lofty scorn, unappeasable silent reprobation and aversion; “Non ragionam di lor, We will not speak
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of them, look only and pass.” Or think of this; “They have
not the hope to die, Non han speranza di morte.” One day, it
had risen sternly benign on the scathed heart of Dante, that
he, wretched, never-resting, worn as he was, would full surely
die; “that Destiny itself could not doom him not to die.”
Such words are in this man. For rigor, earnestness and depth,
he is not to be paralleled in the modern world; to seek his
parallel we must go into the Hebrew Bible, and live with the
antique Prophets there.
morning, dawning afar on the wandering Two, is as the type
of an altered mood. Hope has now dawned; never-dying
Hope, if in company still with heavy sorrow. The obscure
sojourn of demons and reprobate is underfoot; a soft breathing of penitence mounts higher and higher, to the Throne of
Mercy itself. “Pray for me,” the denizens of that Mount of
Pain all say to him. “Tell my Giovanna to pray for me,” my
daughter Giovanna; “I think her mother loves me no more!”
They toil painfully up by that winding steep, “bent down
I do not agree with much modern criticism, in greatly preferring the Inferno to the two other parts of the Divine
Commedia. Such preference belongs, I imagine, to our general Byronism of taste, and is like to be a transient feeling.
Thc Purgatorio and Paradiso, especially the former, one would
almost say, is even more excellent than it. It is a noble thing
that Purgatorio, “Mountain of Purification;” an emblem of
the noblest conception of that age. If sin is so fatal, and Hell
is and must be so rigorous, awful, yet in Repentance too is
man purified; Repentance is the grand Christian act. It is beautiful how Dante works it out. The tremolar dell’ onde, that
“trembling” of the ocean-waves, under the first pure gleam of
like corbels of a building,” some of them,—crushed together
so “for the sin of pride;” yet nevertheless in years, in ages and
aeons, they shall have reached the top, which is heaven’s gate,
and by Mercy shall have been admitted in. The joy too of all,
when one has prevailed; the whole Mountain shakes with joy,
and a psalm of praise rises, when one soul has perfected repentance and got its sin and misery left behind! I call all this a
noble embodiment of a true noble thought.
But indeed the Three compartments mutually support one
another, are indispensable to one another. The Paradiso, a kind
of inarticulate music to me, is the redeeming side of the Inferno; the Inferno without it were untrue. All three make up
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the true Unseen World, as figured in the Christianity of the
Middle Ages; a thing forever memorable, forever true in the
essence of it, to all men. It was perhaps delineated in no human soul with such depth of veracity as in this of Dante’s; a
man sent to sing it, to keep it long memorable. Very notable
with what brief simplicity he passes out of the every-day reality, into the Invisible one; and in the second or third stanza,
we find ourselves in the World of Spirits; and dwell there, as
among things palpable, indubitable! To Dante they were so;
It is a sublime embodiment, or sublimest, of the soul of Christianity. It expresses, as in huge world-wide architectural emblems, how the Christian Dante felt Good and Evil to be the
two polar elements of this Creation, on which it all turns;
that these two differ not by preferability of one to the other,
but by incompatibility absolute and infinite; that the one is
excellent and high as light and Heaven, the other hideous,
black as Gehenna and the Pit of Hell! Everlasting Justice, yet
with Penitence, with everlasting Pity,—all Christianism, as
the real world, as it is called, and its facts, was but the threshold to an infinitely higher Fact of a World. At bottom, the
one was as preternatural as the other. Has not each man a
soul? He will not only be a spirit, but is one. To the earnest
Dante it is all one visible Fact; he believes it, sees it; is the Poet
of it in virtue of that. Sincerity, I say again, is the saving merit,
now as always.
Dante’s Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, are a symbol withal, an
emblematic representation of his Belief about this Universe:—
some Critic in a future age, like those Scandinavian ones the
other day, who has ceased altogether to think as Dante did,
may find this too all an “Allegory,” perhaps an idle Allegory!
Dante and the Middle Ages had it, is emblemed here.
Emblemed: and yet, as I urged the other day, with what entire truth of purpose; how unconscious of any embleming!
Hell, Purgatory, Paradise: these things were not fashioned as
emblems; was there, in our Modern European Mind, any
thought at all of their being emblems! Were they not indubitable awful facts; the whole heart of man taking them for
practically true, all Nature everywhere confirming them? So
is it always in these things. Men do not believe an Allegory.
The future Critic, whatever his new thought may be, who
considers this of Dante to have been all got up as an Allegory,
will commit one sore mistake!—Paganism we recognized as a
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veracious expression of the earnest awe-struck feeling of man
towards the Universe; veracious, true once, and still not without worth for us. But mark here the difference of Paganism
and Christianism; one great difference. Paganism emblemed
chiefly the Operations of Nature; the destinies, efforts, combinations, vicissitudes of things and men in this world;
Christianism emblemed the Law of Human Duty, the Moral
Law of Man. One was for the sensuous nature: a rude helpless utterance of the first Thought of men,—the chief recog-
stands here, in everlasting music. These sublime ideas of his,
terrible and beautiful, are the fruit of the Christian Meditation of all the good men who had gone before him. Precious
they; but also is not he precious? Much, had not he spoken,
would have been dumb; not dead, yet living voiceless.
On the whole, is it not an utterance, this mystic Song, at
once of one of the greatest human souls, and of the highest
thing that Europe had hitherto realized for itself? Christianism,
as Dante sings it, is another than Paganism in the rude Norse
nized virtue, Courage, Superiority to Fear. The other was not
for the sensuous nature, but for the moral. What a progress is
here, if in that one respect only!—
And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centuries, in
a very strange way, found a voice. The Divina Commedia is
of Dante’s writing; yet in truth it belongs to ten Christian
centuries, only the finishing of it is Dante’s. So always. The
craftsman there, the smith with that metal of his, with these
tools, with these cunning methods,—how little of all he does
is properly his work! All past inventive men work there with
him;—as indeed with all of us, in all things. Dante is the
spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they lived by
mind; another than “Bastard Christianism” half-articulately
spoken in the Arab Desert, seven hundred years before!—The
noblest idea made real hitherto among men, is sung, and
emblemed forth abidingly, by one of the noblest men. In the
one sense and in the other, are we not right glad to possess it?
As I calculate, it may last yet for long thousands of years. For
the thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man’s
soul, differs altogether from what is uttered by the outer part.
The outer is of the day, under the empire of mode; the outer
passes away, in swift endless changes; the inmost is the same
yesterday, to-day and forever. True souls, in all generations of
the world, who look on this Dante, will find a brotherhood
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in him; the deep sincerity of his thoughts, his woes and hopes,
will speak likewise to their sincerity; they will feel that this
Dante too was a brother. Napoleon in Saint Helena is charmed
with the genial veracity of old Homer. The oldest Hebrew
Prophet, under a vesture the most diverse from ours, does
yet, because he speaks from the heart of man, speak to all
men’s hearts. It is the one sole secret of continuing long memorable. Dante, for depth of sincerity, is like an antique Prophet
too; his words, like theirs, come from his very heart. One
Desolate for thousands of years; away, vanished; a bewildered
heap of stones and rubbish, the life and existence of it all
gone. Like a dream; like the dust of King Agamemnon! Greece
was; Greece, except in the words it spoke, is not.
The uses of this Dante? We will not say much about his
“uses.” A human soul who has once got into that primal element of Song, and sung forth fitly somewhat therefrom, has
worked in the depths of our existence; feeding through long
times the life-roots of all excellent human things whatsoever,—
need not wonder if it were predicted that his Poem might be
the most enduring thing our Europe has yet made; for nothing so endures as a truly spoken word. All cathedrals,
pontificalities, brass and stone, and outer arrangement never
so lasting, are brief in comparison to an unfathomable heartsong like this: one feels as if it might survive, still of importance to men, when these had all sunk into new irrecognizable
combinations, and had ceased individually to be. Europe has
made much; great cities, great empires, encyclopaedias, creeds,
bodies of opinion and practice: but it has made little of the
class of Dante’s Thought. Homer yet is veritably present face
to face with every open soul of us; and Greece, where is it?
in a way that “utilities” will not succeed well in calculating!
We will not estimate the Sun by the quantity of gaslight it
saves us; Dante shall be invaluable, or of no value. One remark I may make: the contrast in this respect between the
Hero-Poet and the Hero-Prophet. In a hundred years,
Mahomet, as we saw, had his Arabians at Grenada and at Delhi;
Dante’s Italians seem to be yet very much where they were.
Shall we say, then, Dante’s effect on the world was small in
comparison? Not so: his arena is far more restricted; but also
it is far nobler, clearer;—perhaps not less but more important. Mahomet speaks to great masses of men, in the coarse
dialect adapted to such; a dialect filled with inconsistencies,
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crudities, follies: on the great masses alone can he act, and
there with good and with evil strangely blended. Dante speaks
to the noble, the pure and great, in all times and places. Neither does he grow obsolete, as the other does. Dante burns as
a pure star, fixed there in the firmament, at which the great
and the high of all ages kindle themselves: he is the possession
of all the chosen of the world for uncounted time. Dante,
one calculates, may long survive Mahomet. In this way the
balance may be made straight again.
many scimetars he drew, how many gold piasters pocketed,
and what uproar and blaring he made in this world,—he was
but a loud-sounding inanity and futility; at bottom, he was
not at all. Let us honor the great empire of Silence, once more!
The boundless treasury which we do not jingle in our pockets, or count up and present before men! It is perhaps, of all
things, the usefulest for each of us to do, in these loud times.—
As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to embody musically the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion
But, at any rate, it is not by what is called their effect on the
world, by what we can judge of their effect there, that a man
and his work are measured. Effect? Influence? Utility? Let a
man do his work; the fruit of it is the care of Another than he.
It will grow its own fruit; and whether embodied in Caliph
Thrones and Arabian Conquests, so that it “fills all Morning
and Evening Newspapers,” and all Histories, which are a kind
of distilled Newspapers; or not embodied so at all;—what
matters that? That is not the real fruit of it! The Arabian Caliph, in so far only as he did something, was something. If the
great Cause of Man, and Man’s work in God’s Earth, got no
furtherance from the Arabian Caliph, then no matter how
of our Modern Europe, its Inner Life; so Shakspeare, we may
say, embodies for us the Outer Life of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humors, ambitions, what
practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world, men
then had. As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece; so
in Shakspeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our
modern Europe was, in Faith and in Practice, will still be
legible. Dante has given us the Faith or soul; Shakspeare, in a
not less noble way, has given us the Practice or body. This
latter also we were to have; a man was sent for it, the man
Shakspeare. Just when that chivalry way of life had reached
its last finish, and was on the point of breaking down into
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slow or swift dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this
other sovereign Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial
singing voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long-enduring record of it. Two fit men: Dante, deep, fierce as the central fire of the world; Shakspeare, wide, placid, far-seeing, as
the Sun, the upper light of the world. Italy produced the one
world-voice; we English had the honor of producing the other.
Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man
came to us. I think always, so great, quiet, complete and self-
way but is indissoluble portion of solar and stellar systems;
no thought, word or act of man but has sprung withal out of
all men, and works sooner or later, recognizably or
irrecognizable, on all men! It is all a Tree: circulation of sap
and influences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf
with the lowest talon of a root, with every other greatest and
minutest portion of the whole. The Tree Igdrasil, that has its
roots down in the Kingdoms of Hela and Death, and whose
boughs overspread the highest Heaven!—
sufficing is this Shakspeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not
prosecuted him for deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard
of him as a Poet! The woods and skies, the rustic Life of Man
in Stratford there, had been enough for this man! But indeed
that strange outbudding of our whole English Existence, which
we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as of its own
accord? The “Tree Igdrasil” buds and withers by its own
laws,—too deep for our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither,
and every bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws;
not a Sir Thomas Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him.
Curious, I say, and not sufficiently considered: how everything does co-operate with all; not a leaf rotting on the high-
In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan
Era with its Shakspeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all
which had preceded it, is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The Christian Faith, which was the
theme of Dante’s Song, had produced this Practical Life which
Shakspeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it now and always is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital fact in
men’s life. And remark here, as rather curious, that MiddleAge Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament
could abolish it, before Shakspeare, the noblest product of it,
made his appearance. He did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her own time, with Catholicism or what else
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might be necessary, sent him forth; taking small thought of
Acts of Parliament. King Henrys, Queen Elizabeths go their
way; and Nature too goes hers. Acts of Parliament, on the
whole, are small, notwithstanding the noise they make. What
Act of Parliament, debate at St. Stephen’s, on the hustings or
elsewhere, was it that brought this Shakspeare into being? No
dining at Freemason’s Tavern, opening subscription-lists, selling of shares, and infinite other jangling and true or false endeavoring! This Elizabethan Era, and all its nobleness and bless-
of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid
joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so
true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea! It has been
said, that in the constructing of Shakspeare’s Dramas there is,
apart from all other “faculties” as they are called, an understanding manifested, equal to that in Bacon’s Novum Organum
That is true; and it is not a truth that strikes every one. It
would become more apparent if we tried, any of us for him-
edness, came without proclamation, preparation of ours. Priceless Shakspeare was the free gift of Nature; given altogether
silently;—received altogether silently, as if it had been a thing
of little account. And yet, very literally, it is a priceless thing.
One should look at that side of matters too.
Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right
one; I think the best judgment not of this country only, but
of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, that
Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in
the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power
self, how, out of Shakspeare’s dramatic materials, we could
fashion such a result! The built house seems all so fit,—every
way as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and the
nature of things,—we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was
shaped from. The very perfection of the house, as if Nature
herself had made it, hides the builder’s merit. Perfect, more
perfect than any other man, we may call Shakspeare in this:
he discerns, knows as by instinct, what condition he works
under, what his materials are, what his own force and its relation to them is. It is not a transitory glance of insight that will
suffice; it is deliberate illumination of the whole matter; it is
a calmly seeing eye; a great intellect, in short. How a man, of
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some wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, what kind of picture and delineation he will give of it,—
is the best measure you could get of what intellect is in the
man. Which circumstance is vital and shall stand prominent;
which unessential, fit to be suppressed; where is the true beginning, the true sequence and ending? To find out this, you
task the whole force of insight that is in the man. He must
understand the thing; according to the depth of his understanding, will the fitness of his answer be. You will try him
cerns the perfect structure of it. Creative, we said: poetic creation, what is this too but seeing the thing sufficiently? The
word that will describe the thing, follows of itself from such
clear intense sight of the thing. And is not Shakspeare’s morality, his valor, candor, tolerance, truthfulness; his whole victorious strength and greatness, which can triumph over such
obstructions, visible there too? Great as the world. No twisted,
poor convex-concave mirror, reflecting all objects with its own
convexities and concavities; a perfectly level mirror;—that is
so. Does like join itself to like; does the spirit of method stir
in that confusion, so that its embroilment becomes order?
Can the man say, Fiat lux, Let there be light; and out of chaos
make a world? Precisely as there is light in himself, will he
accomplish this.
Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Portraitpainting, delineating of men and things, especially of men,
that Shakspeare is great. All the greatness of the man comes
out decisively here. It is unexampled, I think, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakspeare. The thing he looks at reveals
not this or that face of it, but its inmost heart, and generic
secret: it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he dis-
to say withal, if we will understand it, a man justly related to
all things and men, a good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle
how this great soul takes in all kinds of men and objects, a
Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus; sets them all forth
to us in their round completeness; loving, just, the equal
brother of all. Novum Organum, and all the intellect you will
find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthy, material,
poor in comparison with this. Among modern men, one finds,
in strictness, almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone,
since the days of Shakspeare, reminds me of it. Of him too
you say that he saw the object; you may say what he himself
says of Shakspeare: “His characters are like watches with dial90
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plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible.”
The seeing eye! It is this that discloses the inner harmony of
things; what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has
wrapped up in these often rough embodiments. Something
she did mean. To the seeing eye that something were discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You can laugh over them,
you can weep over them; you can in some way or other genially relate yourself to them;—you can, at lowest, hold your
together and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but
the gift of Nature herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic
Man in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we
say first of all, See. If you cannot do that, it is of no use to
keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against
each other, and name yourself a Poet; there is no hope for
you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster
used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, “But are ye
peace about them, turn away your own and others’ face from
them, till the hour come for practically exterminating and
extinguishing them! At bottom, it is the Poet’s first gift, as it
is all men’s, that he have intellect enough. He will be a Poet if
he have: a Poet in word; or failing that, perhaps still better, a
Poet in act. Whether he write at all; and if so, whether in
prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on
what extremely trivial accidents,—perhaps on his having had
a singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his boyhood!
But the faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart
of things, and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever
exists has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold
sure he’s not a dunce?” Why, really one might ask the same
thing, in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure
he’s not a dunce? There is, in this world, no other entirely
fatal person.
For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is
a correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakspeare’s
faculty, I should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had
included all under that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of
faculties as if they were distinct, things separable; as if a man
had intellect, imagination, fancy, &c., as he has hands, feet
and arms. That is a capital error. Then again, we hear of a
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man’s “intellectual nature,” and of his “moral nature,” as if these
again were divisible, and existed apart. Necessities of language
do perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance; we must speak, I
am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. But words
ought not to harden into things for us. It seems to me, our
apprehension of this matter is, for most part, radically falsified
thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep forever in mind,
that these divisions are at bottom but names; that man’s spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially
Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk:
but, consider it,—without morality, intellect were impossible
for him; a thoroughly immoral man could not know anything at all! To know a thing, what we can call knowing, a
man must first love the thing, sympathize with it: that is, be
virtuously related to it. If he have not the justice to put down
his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand by the
dangerous-true at every turn, how shall he know? His virtues,
all of them, will lie recorded in his knowledge. Nature, with
one and indivisible; that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are but different figures of the same
Power of Insight, all indissolubly connected with each other,
physiognomically related; that if we knew one of them, we
might know all of them. Morality itself, what we call the moral
quality of a man, what is this but another side of the one vital
Force whereby he is and works? All that a man does is physiognomical of him. You may see how a man would fight, by the
way in which he sings; his courage, or want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in the opinion he has formed, no less
than in the stroke he strikes. He is one; and preaches the same
Self abroad in all these ways.
her truth, remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a sealed book: what such can know of Nature is
mean, superficial, small; for the uses of the day merely.—But
does not the very Fox know something of Nature? Exactly
so: it knows where the geese lodge! The human Reynard, very
frequent everywhere in the world, what more does he know
but this and the like of this? Nay, it should be considered too,
that if the Fox had not a certain vulpine morality, he could
not even know where the geese were, or get at the geese! If he
spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his own
misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and
so forth; and had not courage, promptitude, practicality, and
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other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would catch no
geese. We may say of the Fox too, that his morality and insight are of the same dimensions; different faces of the same
internal unity of vulpine life!—These things are worth stating; for the contrary of them acts with manifold very baleful
perversion, in this time: what limitations, modifications they
require, your own candor will supply.
If I say, therefore, that Shakspeare is the greatest of Intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in
This well deserves meditating. It is Nature’s highest reward to
a true simple great soul, that he get thus to be a part of herself.
Such a man’s works, whatsoever he with utmost conscious
exertion and forethought shall accomplish, grow up withal
unconsciously, from the unknown deeps in him;—as the oaktree grows from the Earth’s bosom, as the mountains and
waters shape themselves; with a symmetry grounded on
Nature’s own laws, conformable to all Truth whatsoever. How
much in Shakspeare lies hid; his sorrows, his silent struggles
Shakspeare’s intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an
unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of. Novalis beautifully remarks of him, that those
Dramas of his are Products of Nature too, deep as Nature
herself. I find a great truth in this saying. Shakspeare’s Art is
not Artifice; the noblest worth of it is not there by plan or
precontrivance. It grows up from the deeps of Nature, through
this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of Nature. The latest
generations of men will find new meanings in Shakspeare,
new elucidations of their own human being; “new harmonies
with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with
later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man.”
known to himself; much that was not known at all, not speakable at all: like roots, like sap and forces working underground!
Speech is great; but Silence is greater.
Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. I will
not blame Dante for his misery: it is as battle without victory; but true battle,—the first, indispensable thing. Yet I call
Shakspeare greater than Dante, in that he fought truly, and
did conquer. Doubt it not, he had his own sorrows: those
Sonnets of his will even testify expressly in what deep waters
he had waded, and swum struggling for his life;—as what
man like him ever failed to have to do? It seems to me a
heedless notion, our common one, that he sat like a bird on
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the bough; and sang forth, free and off-hand, never knowing
the troubles of other men. Not so; with no man is it so. How
could a man travel forward from rustic deer-poaching to such
tragedy-writing, and not fall in with sorrows by the way? Or,
still better, how could a man delineate a Hamlet, a Coriolanus,
a Macbeth, so many suffering heroic hearts, if his own heroic
heart had never suffered?—And now, in contrast with all this,
observe his mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of
laughter! You would say, in no point does he exaggerate but
thy; good laughter is not “the crackling of thorns under the
pot.” Even at stupidity and pretension this Shakspeare does
not laugh otherwise than genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle
our very hearts; and we dismiss them covered with explosions
of laughter: but we like the poor fellows only the better for
our laughing; and hope they will get on well there, and continue Presidents of the City-watch. Such laughter, like sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me.
We have no room to speak of Shakspeare’s individual works;
only in laughter. Fiery objurgations, words that pierce and
burn, are to be found in Shakspeare; yet he is always in measure here; never what Johnson would remark as a specially
“good hater.” But his laughter seems to pour from him in
floods; he heaps all manner of ridiculous nicknames on the
butt he is bantering, tumbles and tosses him in all sorts of
horse-play; you would say, with his whole heart laughs. And
then, if not always the finest, it is always a genial laughter.
Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; never. No man
who can laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at these
things. It is some poor character only desiring to laugh, and
have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympa-
though perhaps there is much still waiting to be said on that
head. Had we, for instance, all his plays reviewed as Hamlet,
in Wilhelm Meister, is! A thing which might, one day, be done.
August Wilhelm Schlegel has a remark on his Historical Plays,
Henry Fifth and the others, which is worth remembering. He
calls them a kind of National Epic. Marlborough, you recollect, said, he knew no English History but what he had learned
from Shakspeare. There are really, if we look to it, few as
memorable Histories. The great salient points are admirably
seized; all rounds itself off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence; it is, as Schlegel says, epic;—as indeed all delineation by
a great thinker will be. There are right beautiful things in those
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Pieces, which indeed together form one beautiful thing. That
battle of Agincourt strikes me as one of the most perfect things,
in its sort, we anywhere have of Shakspeare’s. The description
of the two hosts: the worn-out, jaded English; the dread hour,
big with destiny, when the battle shall begin; and then that
deathless valor: “Ye good yeomen, whose limbs were made in
England!” There is a noble Patriotism in it,—far other than
the “indifference” you sometimes hear ascribed to Shakspeare.
A true English heart breathes, calm and strong, through the
true, spoken once and forever; wheresoever and whensoever
there is an open human soul, that will be recognized as true!”
Such bursts, however, make us feel that the surrounding matter is not radiant; that it is, in part, temporary, conventional.
Alas, Shakspeare had to write for the Globe Playhouse: his
great soul had to crush itself, as it could, into that and no
other mould. It was with him, then, as it is with us all. No
man works save under conditions. The sculptor cannot set
his own free Thought before us; but his Thought as he could
whole business; not boisterous, protrusive; all the better for
that. There is a sound in it like the ring of steel. This man too
had a right stroke in him, had it come to that!
But I will say, of Shakspeare’s works generally, that we have
no full impress of him there; even as full as we have of many
men. His works are so many windows, through which we see
a glimpse of the world that was in him. All his works seem,
comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect, written under
cramping circumstances; giving only here and there a note of
the full utterance of the man. Passages there are that come
upon you like splendor out of Heaven; bursts of radiance,
illuminating the very heart of the thing: you say, “That is
translate it into the stone that was given, with the tools that
were given. Disjecta membra are all that we find of any Poet,
or of any man.
Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakspeare may recognize that he too was a Prophet, in his way; of an insight analogous to the Prophetic, though he took it up in another strain.
Nature seemed to this man also divine; unspeakable, deep as
Tophet, high as Heaven; “We are such stuff as Dreams are
made of!” That scroll in Westminster Abbey, which few read
with understanding, is of the depth of any seer. But the man
sang; did not preach, except musically. We called Dante the
melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism. May we not
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call Shakspeare the still more melodious Priest of a true Catholicism, the “Universal Church” of the Future and of all
times? No narrow superstition, harsh asceticism, intolerance,
fanatical fierceness or perversion: a Revelation, so far as it goes,
that such a thousand-fold hidden beauty and divineness dwells
in all Nature; which let all men worship as they can! We may
say without offence, that there rises a kind of universal Psalm
out of this Shakspeare too; not unfit to make itself heard
among the still more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with
sacredness in the fact of such a man being sent into this Earth.
Is he not an eye to us all; a blessed heaven-sent Bringer of
Light?—And, at bottom, was it not perhaps far better that
this Shakspeare, every way an unconscious man, was conscious
of no Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet,
because he saw into those internal Splendors, that he specially
was the “Prophet of God:” and was he not greater than
Mahomet in that? Greater; and also, if we compute strictly, as
we did in Dante’s case, more successful. It was intrinsically an
these, if we understood them, but in harmony!—I cannot
call this Shakspeare a “Sceptic,” as some do; his indifference
to the creeds and theological quarrels of his time misleading
them. No: neither unpatriotic, though he says little about his
Patriotism; nor sceptic, though he says little about his Faith.
Such “indifference” was the fruit of his greatness withal: his
whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship (we may
call it such); these other controversies, vitally important to
other men, were not vital to him.
But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right
glorious thing, and set of things, this that Shakspeare has
brought us? For myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of
error that notion of Mahomet’s, of his supreme Prophethood;
and has come down to us inextricably involved in error to
this day; dragging along with it such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes it a questionable step for me here
and now to say, as I have done, that Mahomet was a true
Speaker at all, and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity and simulacrum; no Speaker, but a Babbler! Even in
Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have exhausted himself
and become obsolete, while this Shakspeare, this Dante may
still be young;—while this Shakspeare may still pretend to be
a Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited periods to come!
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Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even with
Aeschylus or Homer, why should he not, for veracity and
universality, last like them? He is sincere as they; reaches deep
down like them, to the universal and perennial. But as for
Mahomet, I think it had been better for him not to be so
conscious! Alas, poor Mahomet; all that he was conscious of
was a mere error; a futility and triviality,—as indeed such ever
is. The truly great in him too was the unconscious: that he
was a wild Arab lion of the desert, and did speak out with
Odin, while he dwelt with us;—on which point there were
much to be said. But I will say rather, or repeat: In spite of the
sad state Hero-worship now lies in, consider what this
Shakspeare has actually become among us. Which Englishman we ever made, in this land of ours, which million of
Englishmen, would we not give up rather than the Stratford
Peasant? There is no regiment of highest Dignitaries that we
would sell him for. He is the grandest thing we have yet done.
For our honor among foreign nations, as an ornament to our
that great thunder-voice of his, not by words which he thought
to be great, but by actions, by feelings, by a history which
were great! His Koran has become a stupid piece of prolix
absurdity; we do not believe, like him, that God wrote that!
The Great Man here too, as always, is a Force of Nature.
whatsoever is truly great in him springs up from the inarticulate deeps.
Well: this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose to be
Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the Earl of Southampton cast some kind glances
on; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for
sending to the Treadmill! We did not account him a god, like
English Household, what item is there that we would not
surrender rather than him? Consider now, if they asked us,
Will you give up your Indian Empire or your Shakspeare,
you English; never have had any Indian Empire, or never have
had any Shakspeare? Really it were a grave question. Official
persons would answer doubtless in official language; but we,
for our part too, should not we be forced to answer: Indian
Empire, or no Indian Empire; we cannot do without
Shakspeare! Indian Empire will go, at any rate, some day; but
this Shakspeare does not go, he lasts forever with us; we cannot give up our Shakspeare!
Nay, apart from spiritualities; and considering him merely
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as a real, marketable, tangibly useful possession. England, before long, this Island of ours, will hold but a small fraction of
the English: in America, in New Holland, east and west to
the very Antipodes, there will be a Saxondom covering great
spaces of the Globe. And now, what is it that can keep all
these together into virtually one Nation, so that they do not
fall out and fight, but live at peace, in brotherlike intercourse,
helping one another? This is justly regarded as the greatest
practical problem, the thing all manner of sovereignties and
wheresoever, under what sort of Parish-Constable soever, English men and women are, they will say to one another: “Yes,
this Shakspeare is ours; we produced him, we speak and think
by him; we are of one blood and kind with him.” The most
common-sense politician, too, if he pleases, may think of that.
Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an articulate voice; that it produce a man who will speak forth
melodiously what the heart of it means! Italy, for example,
poor Italy lies dismembered, scattered asunder, not appearing
governments are here to accomplish: what is it that will accomplish this? Acts of Parliament, administrative prime-ministers cannot. America is parted from us, so far as Parliament
could part it. Call it not fantastic, for there is much reality in
it: Here, I say, is an English King, whom no time or chance,
Parliament or combination of Parliaments, can dethrone! This
King Shakspeare, does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty,
over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallyingsigns; indestructible; really more valuable in that point of view
than any other means or appliance whatsoever? We can fancy
him as radiant aloft over all the Nations of Englishmen, a
thousand years hence. From Paramatta, from New York,
in any protocol or treaty as a unity at all; yet the noble Italy is
actually one: Italy produced its Dante; Italy can speak! The
Czar of all the Russias, he is strong with so many bayonets,
Cossacks and cannons; and does a great feat in keeping such a
tract of Earth politically together; but he cannot yet speak.
Something great in him, but it is a dumb greatness. He has
had no voice of genius, to be heard of all men and times. He
must learn to speak. He is a great dumb monster hitherto.
His cannons and Cossacks will all have rusted into nonentity,
while that Dante’s voice is still audible. The Nation that has a
Dante is bound together as no dumb Russia can be.—We
must here end what we had to say of the Hero-Poet.
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[May 15, 1840.]
heavenward, by wise guidance through this Earth and its work.
The ideal of him is, that he too be what we can call a voice
from the unseen Heaven; interpreting, even as the Prophet
did, and in a more familiar manner unfolding the same to
men. The unseen Heaven,—the “open secret of the Universe,”—which so few have an eye for! He is the Prophet
shorn of his more awful splendor; burning with mild equable
radiance, as the enlightener of daily life. This, I say, is the ideal
of a Priest. So in old times; so in these, and in all times. One
knows very well that, in reducing ideals to practice, great latitude of tolerance is needful; very great. But a Priest who is
not this at all, who does not any longer aim or try to be this,
is a character—of whom we had rather not speak in this place.
Luther and Knox were by express vocation Priests, and did
faithfully perform that function in its common sense. Yet it
will suit us better here to consider them chiefly in their historical character, rather as Reformers than Priests. There have
been other Priests perhaps equally notable, in calmer times,
for doing faithfully the office of a Leader of Worship; bringing down, by faithful heroism in that kind, a light from
Heaven into the daily life of their people; leading them for-
LECTURE IV.
THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM.
O
is to be of the Great Man
as Priest. We have repeatedly endeavored to ex
plain that all sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of
the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine
Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of
this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great,
victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero,—the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in. The Priest too, as I understand
it, is a kind of Prophet; in him too there is required to be a
light of inspiration, as we must name it. He presides over the
worship of the people; is the Uniter of them with the Unseen
Holy. He is the spiritual Captain of the people; as the Prophet
is their spiritual King with many captains: he guides them
UR PRESENT DISCOURSE
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ward, as under God’s guidance, in the way wherein they were
to go. But when this same way was a rough one, of battle,
confusion and danger, the spiritual Captain, who led through
that, becomes, especially to us who live under the fruit of his
leading, more notable than any other. He is the warfaring and
battling Priest; who led his people, not to quiet faithful labor
as in smooth times, but to faithful valorous conflict, in times
all violent, dismembered: a more perilous service, and a more
memorable one, be it higher or not. These two men we will
Dante, Practices of Life by a Shakspeare,—we are now to see
the reverse process; which also is necessary, which also may be
carried on in the Heroic manner. Curious how this should be
necessary: yet necessary it is. The mild shining of the Poet’s
light has to give place to the fierce lightning of the Reformer:
unfortunately the Reformer too is a personage that cannot
fail in History! The Poet indeed, with his mildness, what is
he but the product and ultimate adjustment of Reform, or
Prophecy, with its fierceness? No wild Saint Dominics and
account our best Priests, inasmuch as they were our best Reformers. Nay I may ask, Is not every true Reformer, by the
nature of him, a Priest first of all? He appeals to Heaven’s
invisible justice against Earth’s visible force; knows that it, the
invisible, is strong and alone strong. He is a believer in the
divine truth of things; a seer, seeing through the shows of
things; a worshipper, in one way or the other, of the divine
truth of things; a Priest, that is. If he be not first a Priest, he
will never be good for much as a Reformer.
Thus then, as we have seen Great Men, in various situations, building up Religions, heroic Forms of human Existence in this world, Theories of Life worthy to be sung by a
Thebaid Eremites, there had been no melodious Dante; rough
Practical Endeavor, Scandinavian and other, from Odin to
Walter Raleigh, from Ulfila to Cranmer, enabled Shakspeare
to speak. Nay the finished Poet, I remark sometimes, is a
symptom that his epoch itself has reached perfection and is
finished; that before long there will be a new epoch, new Reformers needed.
Doubtless it were finer, could we go along always in the
way of music; be tamed and taught by our Poets, as the rude
creatures were by their Orpheus of old. Or failing this rhythmic musical way, how good were it could we get so much as
into the equable way; I mean, if peaceable Priests, reforming
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from day to day, would always suffice us! But it is not so; even
this latter has not yet been realized. Alas, the battling Reformer
too is, from time to time, a needful and inevitable phenomenon. Obstructions are never wanting: the very things that were
once indispensable furtherances become obstructions; and need
to be shaken off, and left behind us,—a business often of enormous difficulty. It is notable enough, surely, how a Theorem
or spiritual Representation, so we may call it, which once took
in the whole Universe, and was completely satisfactory in all
most extravagant, confused sort. Yet I may say, the fact itself
seems certain enough; nay we can trace out the inevitable necessity of it in the nature of things. Every man, as I have stated
somewhere, is not only a learner but a doer: he learns with the
mind given him what has been; but with the same mind he
discovers farther, he invents and devises somewhat of his own.
Absolutely without originality there is no man. No man
whatever believes, or can believe, exactly what his grandfather
believed: he enlarges somewhat, by fresh discovery, his view
parts of it to the highly discursive acute intellect of Dante, one
of the greatest in the world,—had in the course of another
century become dubitable to common intellects; become deniable; and is now, to every one of us, flatly incredible, obsolete
as Odin’s Theorem! To Dante, human Existence, and God’s
ways with men, were all well represented by those Malebolges,
Purgatorios; to Luther not well. How was this? Why could not
Dante’s Catholicism continue; but Luther’s Protestantism must
needs follow? Alas, nothing will continue.
I do not make much of “Progress of the Species,” as handled
in these times of ours; nor do I think you would care to hear
much about it. The talk on that subject is too often of the
of the Universe, and consequently his Theorem of the Universe,—which is an infinite Universe, and can never be embraced wholly or finally by any view or Theorem, in any conceivable enlargement: he enlarges somewhat, I say; finds somewhat that was credible to his grandfather incredible to him,
false to him, inconsistent with some new thing he has discovered or observed. It is the history of every man; and in the
history of Mankind we see it summed up into great historical
amounts,—revolutions, new epochs. Dante’s Mountain of
Purgatory does not stand “in the ocean of the other Hemisphere,” when Columbus has once sailed thither! Men find
no such thing extant in the other Hemisphere. It is not there.
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It must cease to be believed to be there. So with all beliefs
whatsoever in this world,—all Systems of Belief, and Systems of Practice that spring from these.
If we add now the melancholy fact, that when Belief waxes
uncertain, Practice too becomes unsound, and errors, injustices and miseries everywhere more and more prevail, we shall
see material enough for revolution. At all turns, a man who
will do faithfully, needs to believe firmly. If he have to ask at
every turn the world’s suffrage; if he cannot dispense with the
mulation of offences is, as we say, too literally exploded, blasted
asunder volcanically; and there are long troublous periods,
before matters come to a settlement again.
Surely it were mournful enough to look only at this face of
the matter, and find in all human opinions and arrangements
merely the fact that they were uncertain, temporary, subject
to the law of death! At bottom, it is not so: all death, here too
we find, is but of the body, not of the essence or soul; all
destruction, by violent revolution or howsoever it be, is but
world’s suffrage, and make his own suffrage serve, he is a poor
eye-servant; the work committed to him will be misdone.
Every such man is a daily contributor to the inevitable downfall. Whatsoever work he does, dishonestly, with an eye to
the outward look of it, is a new offence, parent of new misery to somebody or other. Offences accumulate till they become insupportable; and are then violently burst through,
cleared off as by explosion. Dante’s sublime Catholicism, incredible now in theory, and defaced still worse by faithless,
doubting and dishonest practice, has to be torn asunder by a
Luther, Shakspeare’s noble Feudalism, as beautiful as it once
looked and was, has to end in a French Revolution. The accu-
new creation on a wider scale. Odinism was Valor; Christianism
was Humility, a nobler kind of Valor. No thought that ever
dwelt honestly as true in the heart of man but was an honest
insight into God’s truth on man’s part, and has an essential
truth in it which endures through all changes, an everlasting
possession for us all. And, on the other hand, what a melancholy notion is that, which has to represent all men, in all
countries and times except our own, as having spent their life
in blind condemnable error, mere lost Pagans, Scandinavians,
Mahometans, only that we might have the true ultimate
knowledge! All generations of men were lost and wrong, only
that this present little section of a generation might be saved
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and right. They all marched forward there, all generations
since the beginning of the world, like the Russian soldiers
into the ditch of Schweidnitz Fort, only to fill up the ditch
with their dead bodies, that we might march over and take
the place! It is an incredible hypothesis.
Such incredible hypothesis we have seen maintained with
fierce emphasis; and this or the other poor individual man,
with his sect of individual men, marching as over the dead
bodies of all men, towards sure victory but when he too, with
of arms, the Arab turban and swift scimetar, Thor’s strong
hammer smiting down Jotuns, shall be welcome. Luther’s
battle-voice, Dante’s march-melody, all genuine things are with
us, not against us. We are all under one Captain. soldiers of
the same host.—Let us now look a little at this Luther’s fighting; what kind of battle it was, and how he comported himself in it. Luther too was of our spiritual Heroes; a Prophet to
his country and time.
his hypothesis and ultimate infallible credo, sank into the ditch,
and became a dead body, what was to be said?—Withal, it is
an important fact in the nature of man, that he tends to reckon
his own insight as final, and goes upon it as such. He will
always do it, I suppose, in one or the other way; but it must
be in some wider, wiser way than this. Are not all true men
that live, or that ever lived, soldiers of the same army, enlisted, under Heaven’s captaincy, to do battle against the same
enemy, the empire of Darkness and Wrong? Why should we
misknow one another, fight not against the enemy but against
ourselves, from mere difference of uniform? All uniforms shall
be good, so they hold in them true valiant men. All fashions
AS
a remark about Idolatry
will perhaps be in place here. One of Mahomet’s characteristics, which indeed belongs to all Prophets, is unlimited implacable zeal against Idolatry. It is the grand theme of Prophets: Idolatry, the worshipping of dead Idols as the Divinity, is
a thing they cannot away with, but have to denounce continually, and brand with inexpiable reprobation; it is the chief
of all the sins they see done under the sun. This is worth
noting. We will not enter here into the theological question
about Idolatry. Idol is Eidolon, a thing seen, a symbol. It is
not God, but a Symbol of God; and perhaps one may question whether any the most benighted mortal ever took it for
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more than a Symbol. I fancy, he did not think that the poor
image his own hands had made was God; but that God was
emblemed by it, that God was in it some way or other. And
now in this sense, one may ask, Is not all worship whatsoever
a worship by Symbols, by eidola, or things seen? Whether
seen, rendered visible as an image or picture to the bodily eye;
or visible only to the inward eye, to the imagination, to the
intellect: this makes a superficial, but no substantial difference. It is still a Thing Seen, significant of Godhead; an Idol.
that had chiefly provoked the Prophet, and filled his inmost
soul with indignation and aversion, was not exactly what suggested itself to his own thought, and came out of him in
words to others, as the thing. The rudest heathen that worshipped Canopus, or the Caabah Black-Stone, he, as we saw,
was superior to the horse that worshipped nothing at all! Nay
there was a kind of lasting merit in that poor act of his; analogous to what is still meritorious in Poets: recognition of a
certain endless divine beauty and significance in stars and all
The most rigorous Puritan has his Confession of Faith, and
intellectual Representation of Divine things, and worships
thereby; thereby is worship first made possible for him. All
creeds, liturgies, religious forms, conceptions that fitly invest
religious feelings, are in this sense eidola, things seen. All worship whatsoever must proceed by Symbols, by Idols:—we
may say, all Idolatry is comparative, and the worst Idolatry is
only more idolatrous.
Where, then, lies the evil of it? Some fatal evil must lie in it,
or earnest prophetic men would not on all hands so reprobate
it. Why is Idolatry so hateful to Prophets? It seems to me as
if, in the worship of those poor wooden symbols, the thing
natural objects whatsoever. Why should the Prophet so mercilessly condemn him? The poorest mortal worshipping his
Fetish, while his heart is full of it, may be an object of pity, of
contempt and avoidance, if you will; but cannot surely be an
object of hatred. Let his heart be honestly full of it, the whole
space of his dark narrow mind illuminated thereby; in one
word, let him entirely believe in his Fetish,—it will then be, I
should say, if not well with him, yet as well as it can readily be
made to be, and you will leave him alone, unmolested there.
But here enters the fatal circumstance of Idolatry, that, in
the era of the Prophets, no man’s mind is any longer honestly
filled with his Idol or Symbol. Before the Prophet can arise
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who, seeing through it, knows it to be mere wood, many
men must have begun dimly to doubt that it was little more.
Condemnable Idolatry is insincere Idolatry. Doubt has eaten
out the heart of it: a human soul is seen clinging spasmodically to an Ark of the Covenant, which it half feels now to
have become a Phantasm. This is one of the balefulest sights.
Souls are no longer filled with their Fetish; but only pretend
to be filled, and would fain make themselves feel that they
are filled. “You do not believe,” said Coleridge; “you only
cere-Cant: that is worth thinking of! Every sort of Worship
ends with this phasis.
I find Luther to have been a Breaker of Idols, no less than any
other Prophet. The wooden gods of the Koreish, made of timber and bees-wax, were not more hateful to Mahomet than
Tetzel’s Pardons of Sin, made of sheepskin and ink, were to
Luther. It is the property of every Hero, in every time, in every
place and situation, that he come back to reality; that he stand
upon things, and not shows of things. According as he loves,
believe that you believe.” It is the final scene in all kinds of
Worship and Symbolism; the sure symptom that death is now
nigh. It is equivalent to what we call Formulism, and Worship of Formulas, in these days of ours. No more immoral
act can be done by a human creature; for it is the beginning of
all immorality, or rather it is the impossibility henceforth of
any morality whatsoever: the innermost moral soul is paralyzed thereby, cast into fatal magnetic sleep! Men are no longer
sincere men. I do not wonder that the earnest man denounces
this, brands it, prosecutes it with inextinguishable aversion.
He and it, all good and it, are at death-feud. Blamable Idolatry is Cant, and even what one may call Sincere-Cant. Sin-
and venerates, articulately or with deep speechless thought, the
awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows of things,
however regular, decorous, accredited by Koreishes or Conclaves,
be intolerable and detestable to him. Protestantism, too, is the
work of a Prophet: the prophet-work of that sixteenth century.
The first stroke of honest demolition to an ancient thing grown
false and idolatrous; preparatory afar off to a new thing, which
shall be true, and authentically divine!
At first view it might seem as if Protestantism were entirely
destructive to this that we call Hero-worship, and represent
as the basis of all possible good, religious or social, for mankind. One often hears it said that Protestantism introduced a
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new era, radically different from any the world had ever seen
before: the era of “private judgment,” as they call it. By this
revolt against the Pope, every man became his own Pope; and
learnt, among other things, that he must never trust any Pope,
or spiritual Hero-captain, any more! Whereby, is not spiritual
union, all hierarchy and subordination among men, henceforth an impossibility? So we hear it said.—Now I need not
deny that Protestantism was a revolt against spiritual sovereignties, Popes and much else. Nay I will grant that English
spiritual, has passed away forever from the world. I should
despair of the world altogether, if so. One of my deepest convictions is, that it is not so. Without sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing possible but an
anarchy; the hatefulest of things. But I find Protestantism,
whatever anarchic democracy it have produced, to be the beginning of new genuine sovereignty and order. I find it to be
a revolt against false sovereigns; the painful but indispensable
first preparative for true sovereigns getting place among us!
Puritanism, revolt against earthly sovereignties, was the second act of it; that the enormous French Revolution itself was
the third act, whereby all sovereignties earthly and spiritual
were, as might seem, abolished or made sure of abolition.
Protestantism is the grand root from which our whole subsequent European History branches out. For the spiritual will
always body itself forth in the temporal history of men; the
spiritual is the beginning of the temporal. And now, sure
enough, the cry is everywhere for Liberty and Equality, Independence and so forth; instead of Kings, Ballot-boxes and Electoral suffrages: it seems made out that any Hero-sovereign, or
loyal obedience of men to a man, in things temporal or things
This is worth explaining a little.
Let us remark, therefore, in the first place, that this of “private judgment” is, at bottom, not a new thing in the world,
but only new at that epoch of the world. There is nothing
generically new or peculiar in the Reformation; it was a return to Truth and Reality in opposition to Falsehood and
Semblance, as all kinds of Improvement and genuine Teaching are and have been. Liberty of private judgment, if we will
consider it, must at all times have existed in the world. Dante
had not put out his eyes, or tied shackles on himself; he was
at home in that Catholicism of his, a free-seeing soul in it,—
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come slaves in it. Liberty of judgment? No iron chain, or
outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of a
man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light,
that judgment of his; he will reign, and believe there, by the
grace of God alone! The sorriest sophistical Bellarmine, preaching sightless faith and passive obedience, must first, by some
kind of conviction, have abdicated his right to be convinced.
His “private judgment” indicated that, as the advisablest step
he could take. The right of private judgment will subsist, in
judgment, faithfully gone about, does by no means necessarily end in selfish independence, isolation; but rather ends necessarily in the opposite of that. It is not honest inquiry that
makes anarchy; but it is error, insincerity, half-belief and untruth that make it. A man protesting against error is on the
way towards uniting himself with all men that believe in truth.
There is no communion possible among men who believe
only in hearsays. The heart of each is lying dead; has no power
of sympathy even with things,—or he would believe them
full force, wherever true men subsist. A true man believes with
his whole judgment, with all the illumination and discernment that is in him, and has always so believed. A false man,
only struggling to “believe that he believes,” will naturally
manage it in some other way. Protestantism said to this latter,
Woe! and to the former, Well done! At bottom, it was no
new saying; it was a return to all old sayings that ever had
been said. Be genuine, be sincere: that was, once more, the
meaning of it. Mahomet believed with his whole mind; Odin
with his whole mind,—he, and all true Followers of Odinism.
They, by their private judgment, had “judged “—so.
And now I venture to assert, that the exercise of private
and not hearsays. No sympathy even with things; how much
less with his fellow-men! He cannot unite with men; he is an
anarchic man. Only in a world of sincere men is unity possible;—and there, in the long-run, it is as good as certain.
For observe one thing, a thing too often left out of view, or
rather altogether lost sight of in this controversy: That it is
not necessary a man should himself have discovered the truth
he is to believe in, and never so sincerely to believe in. A Great
Man, we said, was always sincere, as the first condition of
him. But a man need not be great in order to be sincere; that
is not the necessity of Nature and all Time, but only of certain corrupt unfortunate epochs of Time. A man can believe,
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and make his own, in the most genuine way, what he has
received from another;—and with boundless gratitude to that
other! The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another. Every son of
Adam can become a sincere man, an original man, in this
sense; no mortal is doomed to be an insincere man. Whole
ages, what we call ages of Faith, are original; all men in them,
or the most of men in them, sincere. These are the great and
untruths. A man embraces truth with his eyes open, and because his eyes are open: does he need to shut them before he
can love his Teacher of truth? He alone can love, with a right
gratitude and genuine loyalty of soul, the Hero-Teacher who
has delivered him out of darkness into light. Is not such a one
a true Hero and Serpent-queller; worthy of all reverence! The
black monster, Falsehood, our one enemy in this world, lies
prostrate by his valor; it was he that conquered the world for
us!—See, accordingly, was not Luther himself reverenced as a
fruitful ages: every worker, in all spheres, is a worker not on
semblance but on substance; every work issues in a result: the
general sum of such work is great; for all of it, as genuine,
tends towards one goal; all of it is additive, none of it subtractive. There is true union, true kingship, loyalty, all true
and blessed things, so far as the poor Earth can produce blessedness for men.
Hero-worship? Ah me, that a man be self-subsistent, original, true, or what we call it, is surely the farthest in the world
from indisposing him to reverence and believe other men’s
truth! It only disposes, necessitates and invincibly compels
him to disbelieve other men’s dead formulas, hearsays and
true Pope, or Spiritual Father, being verily such? Napoleon,
from amid boundless revolt of Sansculottism, became a King.
Hero-worship never dies, nor can die. Loyalty and Sovereignty
are everlasting in the world:—and there is this in them, that
they are grounded not on garnitures and semblances, but on
realities and sincerities. Not by shutting your eyes, your “private judgment;” no, but by opening them, and by having
something to see! Luther’s message was deposition and abolition to all false Popes and Potentates, but life and strength,
though afar off, to new genuine ones.
All this of Liberty and Equality, Electoral suffrages, Independence and so forth, we will take, therefore, to be a tempo108
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rary phenomenon, by no means a final one. Though likely to
last a long time, with sad enough embroilments for us all, we
must welcome it, as the penalty of sins that are past, the pledge
of inestimable benefits that are coming. In all ways, it behooved men to quit simulacra and return to fact; cost what it
might, that did behoove to be done. With spurious Popes,
and Believers having no private judgment,—quacks pretending to command over dupes,—what can you do? Misery and
mischief only. You cannot make an association out of insincere men; you cannot build an edifice except by plummet
and level,—at right-angles to one another! In all this wild
revolutionary work, from Protestantism downwards, I see the
blessedest result preparing itself: not abolition of Hero-worship, but rather what I would call a whole World of Heroes.
If Hero mean sincere man, why may not every one of us be a
Hero? A world all sincere, a believing world: the like has been;
the like will again be,—cannot help being. That were the right
sort of Worshippers for Heroes: never could the truly Better
be so reverenced as where all were True and Good!—But we
must hasten to Luther and his Life.
LUTHER’S BIRTHPLACE was Eisleben in Saxony; he came into
the world there on the 10th of November, 1483. It was an
accident that gave this honor to Eisleben. His parents, poor
mine-laborers in a village of that region, named Mohra, had
gone to the Eisleben Winter-Fair: in the tumult of this scene
the Frau Luther was taken with travail, found refuge in some
poor house there, and the boy she bore was named MARTIN
LUTHER. Strange enough to reflect upon it. This poor Frau
Luther, she had gone with her husband to make her small
merchandisings; perhaps to sell the lock of yarn she had been
spinning, to buy the small winter-necessaries for her narrow
hut or household; in the whole world, that day, there was not
a more entirely unimportant-looking pair of people than this
Miner and his Wife. And yet what were all Emperors, Popes
and Potentates, in comparison? There was born here, once
more, a Mighty Man; whose light was to flame as the beacon
over long centuries and epochs of the world; the whole world
and its history was waiting for this man. It is strange, it is
great. It leads us back to another Birth-hour, in a still meaner
environment, Eighteen Hundred years ago,—of which it is
fit that we say nothing, that we think only in silence; for what
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words are there! The Age of Miracles past? The Age of Miracles
is forever here!—
I find it altogether suitable to Luther’s function in this Earth,
and doubtless wisely ordered to that end by the Providence
presiding over him and us and all things, that he was born poor,
and brought up poor, one of the poorest of men. He had to
beg, as the school-children in those times did; singing for alms
and bread, from door to door. Hardship, rigorous Necessity
was the poor boy’s companion; no man nor no thing would
Perhaps the turning incident of his life, we may fancy, was
that death of his friend Alexis, by lightning, at the gate of
Erfurt. Luther had struggled up through boyhood, better and
worse; displaying, in spite of all hindrances, the largest intellect, eager to learn: his father judging doubtless that he might
promote himself in the world, set him upon the study of
Law. This was the path to rise; Luther, with little will in it
either way, had consented: he was now nineteen years of age.
Alexis and he had been to see the old Luther people at
put on a false face to flatter Martin Luther. Among things, not
among the shows of things, had he to grow. A boy of rude
figure, yet with weak health, with his large greedy soul, full of
all faculty and sensibility, he suffered greatly. But it was his task
to get acquainted with realities, and keep acquainted with them,
at whatever cost: his task was to bring the whole world back to
reality, for it had dwelt too long with semblance! A youth nursed
up in wintry whirlwinds, in desolate darkness and difficulty,
that he may step forth at last from his stormy Scandinavia,
strong as a true man, as a god: a Christian Odin,—a right Thor
once more, with his thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly
enough Jotuns and Giant-monsters!
Mansfeldt; were got back again near Erfurt, when a thunderstorm came on; the bolt struck Alexis, he fell dead at Luther’s
feet. What is this Life of ours?—gone in a moment, burnt up
like a scroll, into the blank Eternity! What are all earthly preferments, Chancellorships, Kingships? They lie shrunk together—there! The Earth has opened on them; in a moment
they are not, and Eternity is. Luther, struck to the heart, determined to devote himself to God and God’s service alone.
In spite of all dissuasions from his father and others, he became a Monk in the Augustine Convent at Erfurt.
This was probably the first light-point in the history of
Luther, his purer will now first decisively uttering itself; but,
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for the present, it was still as one light-point in an element all
of darkness. He says he was a pious monk, ich bin ein frommer
Monch gewesen; faithfully, painfully struggling to work out
the truth of this high act of his; but it was to little purpose.
His misery had not lessened; had rather, as it were, increased
into infinitude. The drudgeries he had to do, as novice in his
Convent, all sorts of slave-work, were not his grievance: the
deep earnest soul of the man had fallen into all manner of
black scruples, dubitations; he believed himself likely to die
time. He had never seen the Book before. It taught him another lesson than that of fasts and vigils. A brother monk
too, of pious experience, was helpful. Luther learned now
that a man was saved not by singing masses, but by the infinite grace of God: a more credible hypothesis. He gradually
got himself founded, as on the rock. No wonder he should
venerate the Bible, which had brought this blessed help to
him. He prized it as the Word of the Highest must be prized
by such a man. He determined to hold by that; as through
soon, and far worse than die. One hears with a new interest
for poor Luther that, at this time, he lived in terror of the
unspeakable misery; fancied that he was doomed to eternal
reprobation. Was it not the humble sincere nature of the man?
What was he, that he should be raised to Heaven! He that
had known only misery, and mean slavery: the news was too
blessed to be credible. It could not become clear to him how,
by fasts, vigils, formalities and mass-work, a man’s soul could
be saved. He fell into the blackest wretchedness; had to wander staggering as on the verge of bottomless Despair.
It must have been a most blessed discovery, that of an old
Latin Bible which he found in the Erfurt Library about this
life and to death he firmly did.
This, then, is his deliverance from darkness, his final triumph over darkness, what we call his conversion; for himself
the most important of all epochs. That he should now grow
daily in peace and clearness; that, unfolding now the great
talents and virtues implanted in him, he should rise to importance in his Convent, in his country, and be found more
and more useful in all honest business of life, is a natural result. He was sent on missions by his Augustine Order, as a
man of talent and fidelity fit to do their business well: the
Elector of Saxony, Friedrich, named the Wise, a truly wise
and just prince, had cast his eye on him as a valuable person;
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made him Professor in his new University of Wittenberg,
Preacher too at Wittenberg; in both which capacities, as in all
duties he did, this Luther, in the peaceable sphere of common
life, was gaining more and more esteem with all good men.
It was in his twenty-seventh year that he first saw Rome;
being sent thither, as I said, on mission from his Convent.
Pope Julius the Second, and what was going on at Rome,
must have filled the mind of Luther with amazement. He
had come as to the Sacred City, throne of God’s High-priest
It is curious to reflect what might have been the issue, had
Roman Popery happened to pass this Luther by; to go on in
its great wasteful orbit, and not come athwart his little path,
and force him to assault it! Conceivable enough that, in this
case, he might have held his peace about the abuses of Rome;
left Providence, and God on high, to deal with them! A modest
quiet man; not prompt he to attack irreverently persons in
authority. His clear task, as I say, was to do his own duty; to
walk wisely in this world of confused wickedness, and save
on Earth; and he found it—what we know! Many thoughts
it must have given the man; many which we have no record
of, which perhaps he did not himself know how to utter.
This Rome, this scene of false priests, clothed not in the beauty
of holiness, but in far other vesture, is false: but what is it to
Luther? A mean man he, how shall he reform a world? That
was far from his thoughts. A humble, solitary man, why
should he at all meddle with the world? It was the task of
quite higher men than he. His business was to guide his own
footsteps wisely through the world. Let him do his own obscure duty in it well; the rest, horrible and dismal as it looks,
is in God’s hand, not in his.
his own soul alive. But the Roman High-priesthood did come
athwart him: afar off at Wittenberg he, Luther, could not get
lived in honesty for it; he remonstrated, resisted, came to extremity; was struck at, struck again, and so it came to wager
of battle between them! This is worth attending to in Luther’s
history. Perhaps no man of so humble, peaceable a disposition ever filled the world with contention. We cannot but see
that he would have loved privacy, quiet diligence in the shade;
that it was against his will he ever became a notoriety. Notoriety: what would that do for him? The goal of his march
through this world was the Infinite Heaven; an indubitable
goal for him: in a few years, he should either have attained
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that, or lost it forever! We will say nothing at all, I think, of
that sorrowfulest of theories, of its being some mean shopkeeper grudge, of the Augustine Monk against the Dominican, that first kindled the wrath of Luther, and produced the
Protestant Reformation. We will say to the people who maintain it, if indeed any such exist now: Get first into the sphere
of thought by which it is so much as possible to judge of
Luther, or of any man like Luther, otherwise than distractedly; we may then begin arguing with you.
them. It was the beginning of the whole Reformation. We
know how it went; forward from this first public challenge
of Tetzel, on the last day of October, 1517, through remonstrance and argument;—spreading ever wider, rising ever
higher; till it became unquenchable, and enveloped all the
world. Luther’s heart’s desire was to have this grief and other
griefs amended; his thought was still far other than that of
introducing separation in the Church, or revolting against the
Pope, Father of Christendom.—The elegant Pagan Pope cared
The Monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way of trade, by
Leo Tenth,—who merely wanted to raise a little money, and
for the rest seems to have been a Pagan rather than a Christian, so far as he was anything,—arrived at Wittenberg, and
drove his scandalous trade there. Luther’s flock bought Indulgences; in the confessional of his Church, people pleaded to
him that they had already got their sins pardoned. Luther, if
he would not be found wanting at his own post, a false sluggard and coward at the very centre of the little space of ground
that was his own and no other man’s, had to step forth against
Indulgences, and declare aloud that they were a futility and
sorrowful mockery, that no man’s sins could be pardoned by
little about this Monk and his doctrines; wished, however, to
have done with the noise of him: in a space of some three
years, having tried various softer methods, he thought good
to end it by fire. He dooms the Monk’s writings to be burnt
by the hangman, and his body to be sent bound to Rome,—
probably for a similar purpose. It was the way they had ended
with Huss, with Jerome, the century before. A short argument, fire. Poor Huss: he came to that Constance Council,
with all imaginable promises and safe-conducts; an earnest,
not rebellious kind of man: they laid him instantly in a stone
dungeon “three feet wide, six feet high, seven feet long;”
_burnt_ the true voice of him out of this world; choked it in
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smoke and fire. That was not well done!
I, for one, pardon Luther for now altogether revolting against
the Pope. The elegant Pagan, by this fire-decree of his, had
kindled into noble just wrath the bravest heart then living in
this world. The bravest, if also one of the humblest,
peaceablest; it was now kindled. These words of mine, words
of truth and soberness, aiming faithfully, as human inability
would allow, to promote God’s truth on Earth, and save men’s
souls, you, God’s vicegerent on earth, answer them by the
of much, had at length got more than it could bear.
Formulism, Pagan Popeism, and other Falsehood and corrupt Semblance had ruled long enough: and here once more
was a man found who durst tell all men that God’s-world
stood not on semblances but on realities; that Life was a truth,
and not a lie!
At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider Luther as
a Prophet Idol-breaker; a bringer-back of men to reality. It is
the function of great men and teachers. Mahomet said, These
hangman and fire? You will burn me and them, for answer to
the God’s-message they strove to bring you? You are not God’s
vicegerent; you are another’s than his, I think! I take your
Bull, as an emparchmented Lie, and burn it. You will do what
you see good next: this is what I do.—It was on the 10th of
December, 1520, three years after the beginning of the business, that Luther, “with a great concourse of people,” took
this indignant step of burning the Pope’s fire-decree “at the
Elster-Gate of Wittenberg.” Wittenberg looked on “with
shoutings;” the whole world was looking on. The Pope should
not have provoked that “shout”! It was the shout of the awakening of nations. The quiet German heart, modest, patient
idols of yours are wood; you put wax and oil on them, the
flies stick on them: they are not God, I tell you, they are
black wood! Luther said to the Pope, This thing of yours that
you call a Pardon of Sins, it is a bit of rag-paper with ink. It is
nothing else; it, and so much like it, is nothing else. God
alone can pardon sins. Popeship, spiritual Fatherhood of God’s
Church, is that a vain semblance, of cloth and parchment? It
is an awful fact. God’s Church is not a semblance, Heaven
and Hell are not semblances. I stand on this, since you drive
me to it. Standing on this, I a poor German Monk am stronger than you all. I stand solitary, friendless, but on God’s Truth;
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mories, thunders spiritual and temporal, stand on the Devil’s
Lie, and are not so strong!—
The Diet of Worms, Luther’s appearance there on the 17th
of April, 1521, may be considered as the greatest scene in
Modern European History; the point, indeed, from which
the whole subsequent history of civilization takes its rise. After multiplied negotiations, disputations, it had come to this.
The young Emperor Charles Fifth, with all the Princes of
Germany, Papal nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and temporal,
kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in reality
our petition too, the petition of the whole world, lying in
dark bondage of soul, paralyzed under a black spectral Nightmare and triple-hatted Chimera, calling itself Father in God,
and what not: “Free us; it rests with thee; desert us not!”
Luther did not desert us. His speech, of two hours, distinguished itself by its respectful, wise and honest tone; submissive to whatsoever could lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more than that. His writings, he said, were
are assembled there: Luther is to appear and answer for himself, whether he will recant or not. The world’s pomp and
power sits there on this hand: on that, stands up for God’s
Truth, one man, the poor miner Hans Luther’s Son. Friends
had reminded him of Huss, advised him not to go; he would
not be advised. A large company of friends rode out to meet
him, with still more earnest warnings; he answered, “Were
there as many Devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would
on.” The people, on the morrow, as he went to the Hall of
the Diet, crowded the windows and house-tops, some of them
calling out to him, in solemn words, not to recant: “Whosoever denieth me before men!” they cried to him,—as in a
partly his own, partly derived from the Word of God. As to
what was his own, human infirmity entered into it; unguarded
anger, blindness, many things doubtless which it were a blessing for him could he abolish altogether. But as to what stood
on sound truth and the Word of God, he could not recant it.
How could he? “Confute me,” he concluded, “by proofs of
Scripture, or else by plain just arguments: I cannot recant otherwise. For it is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against
conscience. Here stand I; I can do no other: God assist me!”—
It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the Modern History
of Men. English Puritanism, England and its Parliaments,
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tion, Europe and its work everywhere at present: the germ of
it all lay there: had Luther in that moment done other, it had
all been otherwise! The European World was asking him: Am
I to sink ever lower into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome accursed death; or, with whatever paroxysm, to cast the
falsehoods out of me, and be cured and live?—
GREAT WARS, contentions and disunion followed out of this
Reformation; which last down to our day, and are yet far
from ended. Great talk and crimination has been made about
these. They are lamentable, undeniable; but after all, what
has Luther or his cause to do with them? It seems strange
reasoning to charge the Reformation with all this. When
Hercules turned the purifying river into King Augeas’s stables,
I have no doubt the confusion that resulted was considerable
all around: but I think it was not Hercules’s blame; it was
some other’s blame! The Reformation might bring what results it liked when it came, but the Reformation simply could
not help coming. To all Popes and Popes’ advocates, expostulating, lamenting and accusing, the answer of the world is:
Once for all, your Popehood has become untrue. No matter
how good it was, how good you say it is, we cannot believe
it; the light of our whole mind, given us to walk by from
Heaven above, finds it henceforth a thing unbelievable. We
will not believe it, we will not try to believe it,—we dare not!
The thing is untrue; we were traitors against the Giver of all
Truth, if we durst pretend to think it true. Away with it; let
whatsoever likes come in the place of it: with it we can have
no farther trade!—Luther and his Protestantism is not responsible for wars; the false Simulacra that forced him to protest,
they are responsible. Luther did what every man that God has
made has not only the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to
do: answered a Falsehood when it questioned him, Dost thou
believe me?—No!—At what cost soever, without counting
of costs, this thing behooved to be done. Union, organization spiritual and material, a far nobler than any Popedom or
Feudalism in their truest days, I never doubt, is coming for
the world; sure to come. But on Fact alone, not on Semblance and Simulacrum, will it be able either to come, or to
stand when come. With union grounded on falsehood, and
ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have anything to
do. Peace? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome grave is
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peaceable. We hope for a living peace, not a dead one!
And yet, in prizing justly the indispensable blessings of the
New, let us not be unjust to the Old. The Old was true, if it
no longer is. In Dante’s days it needed no sophistry, self-blinding or other dishonesty, to get itself reckoned true. It was
good then; nay there is in the soul of it a deathless good. The
cry of “No Popery” is foolish enough in these days. The speculation that Popery is on the increase, building new chapels
and so forth, may pass for one of the idlest ever started. Very
Popery can build new chapels; welcome to do so, to all
lengths. Popery cannot come back, any more than Paganism
can,—which also still lingers in some countries. But, indeed,
it is with these things, as with the ebbing of the sea: you look
at the waves oscillating hither, thither on the beach; for minutes you cannot tell how it is going; look in half an hour
where it is,—look in half a century where your Popehood is!
Alas, would there were no greater danger to our Europe than
the poor old Pope’s revival! Thor may as soon try to revive.—
curious: to count up a few Popish chapels, listen to a few
Protestant logic-choppings,—to much dull-droning drowsy
inanity that still calls itself Protestant, and say: See, Protestantism is dead; Popeism is more alive than it, will be alive
after it!—Drowsy inanities, not a few, that call themselves
Protestant are dead; but Protestantism has not died yet, that I
hear of! Protestantism, if we will look, has in these days produced its Goethe, its Napoleon; German Literature and the
French Revolution; rather considerable signs of life! Nay, at
bottom, what else is alive but Protestantism? The life of most
else that one meets is a galvanic one merely,—not a pleasant,
not a lasting sort of life!
And withal this oscillation has a meaning. The poor old
Popehood will not die away entirely, as Thor has done, for
some time yet; nor ought it. We may say, the Old never dies
till this happen, Till all the soul of good that was in it have
got itself transfused into the practical New. While a good
work remains capable of being done by the Romish form; or,
what is inclusive of all, while a pious life remains capable of
being led by it, just so long, if we consider, will this or the
other human soul adopt it, go about as a living witness of it.
So long it will obtrude itself on the eye of us who reject it, till
we in our practice too have appropriated whatsoever of truth
was in it. Then, but also not till then, it will have no charm
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more for any man. It lasts here for a purpose. Let it last as
long as it can.—
OF LUTHER I WILL ADD NOW, in reference to all these wars and
bloodshed, the noticeable fact that none of them began so
long as he continued living. The controversy did not get to
fighting so long as he was there. To me it is proof of his
greatness in all senses, this fact. How seldom do we find a
man that has stirred up some vast commotion, who does not
himself perish, swept away in it! Such is the usual course of
revolutionists. Luther continued, in a good degree, sovereign
of this greatest revolution; all Protestants, of what rank or function soever, looking much to him for guidance: and he held it
peaceable, continued firm at the centre of it. A man to do this
must have a kingly faculty: he must have the gift to discern at
all turns where the true heart of the matter lies, and to plant
himself courageously on that, as a strong true man, that other
true men may rally round him there. He will not continue
leader of men otherwise. Luther’s clear deep force of judgment,
his force of all sorts, of silence, of tolerance and moderation,
among others, are very notable in these circumstances.
Tolerance, I say; a very genuine kind of tolerance: he distinguishes what is essential, and what is not; the unessential may
go very much as it will. A complaint comes to him that such
and such a Reformed Preacher “will not preach without a cassock.” Well, answers Luther, what harm will a cassock do the
man? “Let him have a cassock to preach in; let him have three
cassocks if he find benefit in them!” His conduct in the matter of Karlstadt’s wild image-breaking; of the Anabaptists; of
the Peasants’ War, shows a noble strength, very different from
spasmodic violence. With sure prompt insight he discriminates what is what: a strong just man, he speaks forth what is
the wise course, and all men follow him in that. Luther’s
Written Works give similar testimony of him. The dialect of
these speculations is now grown obsolete for us; but one still
reads them with a singular attraction. And indeed the mere
grammatical diction is still legible enough; Luther’s merit in
literary history is of the greatest: his dialect became the language of all writing. They are not well written, these Fourand-twenty Quartos of his; written hastily, with quite other
than literary objects. But in no Books have I found a more
robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty of a man than in
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these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged sterling sense and strength. He dashes out illumination from him;
his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very
secret of the matter. Good humor too, nay tender affection,
nobleness and depth: this man could have been a Poet too!
He had to work an Epic Poem, not write one. I call him a
great Thinker; as indeed his greatness of heart already betokens that.
Richter says of Luther’s words, “His words are half-battles.”
flicts. Luther sat translating one of the Psalms; he was worn
down with long labor, with sickness, abstinence from food:
there rose before him some hideous indefinable Image, which
he took for the Evil One, to forbid his work: Luther started
up, with fiend-defiance; flung his inkstand at the spectre, and
it disappeared! The spot still remains there; a curious monument of several things. Any apothecary’s apprentice can now
tell us what we are to think of this apparition, in a scientific
sense: but the man’s heart that dare rise defiant, face to face,
They may be called so. The essential quality of him was, that
he could fight and conquer; that he was a right piece of human Valor. No more valiant man, no mortal heart to be called
braver, that one has record of, ever lived in that Teutonic Kindred, whose character is valor. His defiance of the “Devils” in
Worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if now
spoken. It was a faith of Luther’s that there were Devils, spiritual denizens of the Pit, continually besetting men. Many
times, in his writings, this turns up; and a most small sneer
has been grounded on it by some. In the room of the Wartburg
where he sat translating the Bible, they still show you a black
spot on the wall; the strange memorial of one of these con-
against Hell itself, can give no higher proof of fearlessness.
The thing he will quail before exists not on this Earth or
under it.—Fearless enough! “The Devil is aware,” writes he
on one occasion, “that this does not proceed out of fear in
me. I have seen and defied innumerable Devils. Duke George,”
of Leipzig, a great enemy of his, “Duke George is not equal
to one Devil,”—far short of a Devil! “If I had business at
Leipzig, I would ride into Leipzig, though it rained Duke
Georges for nine days running.” What a reservoir of Dukes to
ride into!—
At the same time, they err greatly who imagine that this
man’s courage was ferocity, mere coarse disobedient obstinacy
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and savagery, as many do. Far from that. There may be an
absence of fear which arises from the absence of thought or
affection, from the presence of hatred and stupid fury. We do
not value the courage of the tiger highly! With Luther it was
far otherwise; no accusation could be more unjust than this
of mere ferocious violence brought against him. A most gentle
heart withal, full of pity and love, as indeed the truly valiant
heart ever is. The tiger before a stronger foe—flies: the tiger is
not what we call valiant, only fierce and cruel. I know few
In Luther’s Table-Talk, a posthumous Book of anecdotes
and sayings collected by his friends, the most interesting now
of all the Books proceeding from him, we have many beautiful unconscious displays of the man, and what sort of nature
he had. His behavior at the death-bed of his little Daughter,
so still, so great and loving, is among the most affecting things.
He is resigned that his little Magdalene should die, yet longs
inexpressibly that she might live;—follows, in awe-struck
thought, the flight of her little soul through those unknown
things more touching than those soft breathings of affection,
soft as a child’s or a mother’s, in this great wild heart of Luther.
So honest, unadulterated with any cant; homely, rude in their
utterance; pure as water welling from the rock. What, in fact,
was all that down-pressed mood of despair and reprobation,
which we saw in his youth, but the outcome of pre-eminent
thoughtful gentleness, affections too keen and fine? It is the
course such men as the poor Poet Cowper fall into. Luther to a
slight observer might have seemed a timid, weak man; modesty, affectionate shrinking tenderness the chief distinction of
him. It is a noble valor which is roused in a heart like this, once
stirred up into defiance, all kindled into a heavenly blaze.
realms. Awe-struck; most heartfelt, we can see; and sincere,—
for after all dogmatic creeds and articles, he feels what nothing it is that we know, or can know: His little Magdalene
shall be with God, as God wills; for Luther too that is all;
Islam is all.
Once, he looks out from his solitary Patmos, the Castle of
Coburg, in the middle of the night: The great vault of Immensity, long flights of clouds sailing through it,—dumb,
gaunt, huge:—who supports all that? “None ever saw the pillars of it; yet it is supported.” God supports it. We must know
that God is great, that God is good; and trust, where we cannot see.—Returning home from Leipzig once, he is struck by
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the beauty of the harvest-fields: How it stands, that golden
yellow corn, on its fair taper stem, its golden head bent, all rich
and waving there,—the meek Earth, at God’s kind bidding,
has produced it once again; the bread of man!—In the garden
at Wittenberg one evening at sunset, a little bird has perched
for the night: That little bird, says Luther, above it are the stars
and deep Heaven of worlds; yet it has folded its little wings;
gone trustfully to rest there as in its home: the Maker of it has
given it too a home!—Neither are mirthful turns wanting: there
huge crag-like brows and bones, the emblem of rugged energy; at first, almost a repulsive face. Yet in the eyes especially
there is a wild silent sorrow; an unnamable melancholy, the
element of all gentle and fine affections; giving to the rest the
true stamp of nobleness. Laughter was in this Luther, as we
said; but tears also were there. Tears also were appointed him;
tears and hard toil. The basis of his life was Sadness, Earnestness. In his latter days, after all triumphs and victories, he
expresses himself heartily weary of living; he considers that
is a great free human heart in this man. The common speech of
him has a rugged nobleness, idiomatic, expressive, genuine;
gleams here and there with beautiful poetic tints. One feels
him to be a great brother man. His love of Music, indeed, is
not this, as it were, the summary of all these affections in him?
Many a wild unutterability he spoke forth from him in the
tones of his flute. The Devils fled from his flute, he says. Deathdefiance on the one hand, and such love of music on the other;
I could call these the two opposite poles of a great soul; between these two all great things had room.
Luther’s face is to me expressive of him; in Kranach’s best
portraits I find the true Luther. A rude plebeian face; with its
God alone can and will regulate the course things are taking,
and that perhaps the Day of Judgment is not far. As for him,
he longs for one thing: that God would release him from his
labor, and let him depart and be at rest. They understand
little of the man who cite this in discredit of him!—I will call
this Luther a true Great Man; great in intellect, in courage,
affection and integrity; one of our most lovable and precious
men. Great, not as a hewn obelisk; but as an Alpine mountain,—so simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting up to be
great at all; there for quite another purpose than being great!
Ah yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the
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leys with flowers! A right Spiritual Hero and Prophet; once
more, a true Son of Nature and Fact, for whom these centuries, and many that are to come yet, will be thankful to Heaven.
THE MOST INTERESTING PHASIS which the Reformation anywhere assumes, especially for us English, is that of Puritanism. In Luther’s own country Protestantism soon dwindled
into a rather barren affair: not a religion or faith, but rather
now a theological jangling of argument, the proper seat of it
not the heart; the essence of it sceptical contention: which
indeed has jangled more and more, down to Voltaireism itself,—through Gustavus-Adolphus contentions onwards to
French-Revolution ones! But in our Island there arose a Puritanism, which even got itself established as a Presbyterianism
and National Church among the Scotch; which came forth
as a real business of the heart; and has produced in the world
very notable fruit. In some senses, one may say it is the only
phasis of Protestantism that ever got to the rank of being a
Faith, a true heart-communication with Heaven, and of exhibiting itself in History as such. We must spare a few words
for Knox; himself a brave and remarkable man; but still more
important as Chief Priest and Founder, which one may consider him to be, of the Faith that became Scotland’s, New
England’s, Oliver Cromwell’s. History will have something
to say about this, for some time to come!
We may censure Puritanism as we please; and no one of us,
I suppose, but would find it a very rough defective thing. But
we, and all men, may understand that it was a genuine thing;
for Nature has adopted it, and it has grown, and grows. I say
sometimes, that all goes by wager-of-battle in this world; that
strength, well understood, is the measure of all worth. Give a
thing time; if it can succeed, it is a right thing. Look now at
American Saxondom; and at that little Fact of the sailing of
the Mayflower, two hundred years ago, from Delft Haven in
Holland! Were we of open sense as the Greeks were, we had
found a Poem here; one of Nature’s own Poems, such as she
writes in broad facts over great continents. For it was properly the beginning of America: there were straggling settlers in
America before, some material as of a body was there; but the
soul of it was first this. These poor men, driven out of their
own country, not able well to live in Holland, determine on
settling in the New World. Black untamed forests are there,
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and wild savage creatures; but not so cruel as Star-chamber
hangmen. They thought the Earth would yield them food, if
they tilled honestly; the everlasting heaven would stretch, there
too, overhead; they should be left in peace, to prepare for
Eternity by living well in this world of Time; worshipping in
what they thought the true, not the idolatrous way. They
clubbed their small means together; hired a ship, the little
ship Mayflower, and made ready to set sail.
In Neal’s History of the Puritans [Neal (London, 1755), i.
fingers, strength in its right arm; it can steer ships, fell forests,
remove mountains;—it is one of the strongest things under
this sun at present!
In the history of Scotland, too, I can find properly but one
epoch: we may say, it contains nothing of world-interest at all
but this Reformation by Knox. A poor barren country, full
of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings; a people in the
last state of rudeness and destitution; little better perhaps than
Ireland at this day. Hungry fierce barons, not so much as able
490] is an account of the ceremony of their departure: solemnity, we might call it rather, for it was a real act of worship.
Their minister went down with them to the beach, and their
brethren whom they were to leave behind; all joined in solemn prayer, That God would have pity on His poor children,
and go with them into that waste wilderness, for He also had
made that, He was there also as well as here.—Hah! These
men, I think, had a work! The weak thing, weaker than a
child, becomes strong one day, if it be a true thing. Puritanism was only despicable, laughable then; but nobody can
manage to laugh at it now. Puritanism has got weapons and
sinews; it has firearms, war-navies; it has cunning in its ten
to form any arrangement with each other how to divide what
they fleeced from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the Colombian Republics are at this day, to make of every alteration
a revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging
the old ministers on gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no
very singular significance! “Bravery” enough, I doubt not; fierce
fighting in abundance: but not braver or fiercer than that of
their old Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors; whose exploits we
have not found worth dwelling on! It is a country as yet without a soul: nothing developed in it but what is rude, external,
semi-animal. And now at the Reformation, the internal life is
kindled, as it were, under the ribs of this outward material
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death. A cause, the noblest of causes kindles itself, like a beacon set on high; high as Heaven, yet attainable from Earth;—
whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a
Member of Christ’s visible Church; a veritable Hero, if he
prove a true man!
Well; this is what I mean by a whole “nation of heroes;” a
believing nation. There needs not a great soul to make a hero;
there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin;
that will be a great soul! The like has been seen, we find. The
had it been far rougher. On the whole, cheap at any price!—
as life is. The people began to live: they needed first of all to
do that, at what cost and costs soever. Scotch Literature and
Thought, Scotch Industry; James Watt, David Hume, Walter
Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation acting
in the heart’s core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find that without the Reformation they would not have
been. Or what of Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became that of England, of New England. A tumult in the High
like will be again seen, under wider forms than the Presbyterian: there can be no lasting good done till then.—Impossible! say some. Possible? Has it not been, in this world, as a
practiced fact? Did Hero-worship fail in Knox’s case? Or are
we made of other clay now? Did the Westminster Confession
of Faith add some new property to the soul of man? God
made the soul of man. He did not doom any soul of man to
live as a Hypothesis and Hearsay, in a world filled with such,
and with the fatal work and fruit of such!—
But to return: This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we
may really call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth
business; but it was welcome surely, and cheap at that price,
Church of Edinburgh spread into a universal battle and struggle
over all these realms;—there came out, after fifty years’ struggling, what we all call the “Glorious Revolution” a Habeas
Corpus Act, Free Parliaments, and much else!—Alas, is it not
too true what we said, That many men in the van do always,
like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz,
and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass
over them dry-shod, and gain the honor? How many earnest
rugged Cromwells, Knoxes, poor Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough miry places, have to
struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured, bemired,—before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step over them
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in official pumps and silk-stockings, with universal threetimes-three!
It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now
after three hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit
before the world; intrinsically for having been, in such way as
it was then possible to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen! Had
he been a poor Half-and-half, he could have crouched into
the corner, like so many others; Scotland had not been delivered; and Knox had been without blame. He is the one
own sake, ought to look through the rumors and controversies enveloping the man, into the man himself.
For one thing, I will remark that this post of Prophet to his
Nation was not of his seeking; Knox had lived forty years
quietly obscure, before he became conspicuous. He was the
son of poor parents; had got a college education; become a
Priest; adopted the Reformation, and seemed well content to
guide his own steps by the light of it, nowise unduly intruding it on others. He had lived as Tutor in gentlemen’s fami-
Scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and the world
owe a debt. He has to plead that Scotland would forgive him
for having been worth to it any million “unblamable”
Scotchmen that need no forgiveness! He bared his breast to
the battle; had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn in
exile, in clouds and storms; was censured, shot at through his
windows; had a right sore fighting life: if this world were his
place of recompense, he had made but a bad venture of it. I
cannot apologize for Knox. To him it is very indifferent, these
two hundred and fifty years or more, what men say of him.
But we, having got above all those details of his battle, and
living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory, we, for our
lies; preaching when any body of persons wished to hear his
doctrine: resolute he to walk by the truth, and speak the truth
when called to do it; not ambitious of more; not fancying
himself capable of more. In this entirely obscure way he had
reached the age of forty; was with the small body of Reformers who were standing siege in St. Andrew’s Castle,—when
one day in their chapel, the Preacher after finishing his exhortation to these fighters in the forlorn hope, said suddenly,
That there ought to be other speakers, that all men who had
a priest’s heart and gift in them ought now to speak;—which
gifts and heart one of their own number, John Knox the name
of him, had: Had he not? said the Preacher, appealing to all
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the audience: what then is his duty? The people answered affirmatively; it was a criminal forsaking of his post, if such a
man held the word that was in him silent. Poor Knox was
obliged to stand up; he attempted to reply; he could say no
word;—burst into a flood of tears, and ran out. It is worth
remembering, that scene. He was in grievous trouble for some
days. He felt what a small faculty was his for this great work.
He felt what a baptism he was called to be baptized withal.
He “burst into tears.”
of God? said Knox, when the turn came to him: This is no
Mother of God: this is “a pented bredd,”—a piece of wood, I
tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, I think,
than for being worshipped, added Knox; and flung the thing
into the river. It was not very cheap jesting there: but come of
it what might, this thing to Knox was and must continue
nothing other than the real truth; it was a pented bredd: worship it he would not.
He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of
Our primary characteristic of a Hero, that he is sincere, applies emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that
this, whatever might be his other qualities or faults, is among
the truest of men. With a singular instinct he holds to the
truth and fact; the truth alone is there for him, the rest a mere
shadow and deceptive nonentity. However feeble, forlorn the
reality may seem, on that and that only can he take his stand.
In the Galleys of the River Loire, whither Knox and the others, after their Castle of St. Andrew’s was taken, had been sent
as Galley-slaves,—some officer or priest, one day, presented
them an Image of the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the
blasphemous heretics, should do it reverence. Mother? Mother
courage; the Cause they had was the true one, and must and
would prosper; the whole world could not put it down. Reality is of God’s making; it is alone strong. How many pented
bredds, pretending to be real, are fitter to swim than to be
worshipped!—This Knox cannot live but by fact: he clings
to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic: it
is the grand gift he has. We find in Knox a good honest intellectual talent, no transcendent one;—a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared with Luther: but in heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in sincerity, as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him
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is of the true Prophet cast. “He lies there,” said the Earl of
Morton at his grave, “who never feared the face of man.” He
resembles, more than any of the moderns, an Old-Hebrew
Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid narrow-looking adherence to God’s truth, stern rebuke in the name of
God to all that forsake truth: an Old-Hebrew Prophet in the
guise of an Edinburgh Minister of the Sixteenth Century. We
are to take him for that; not require him to be other.
Knox’s conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to
untrue to the Nation and Cause of Scotland. A man who did
not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field for
intriguing ambitious Guises, and the Cause of God trampled
underfoot of Falsehoods, Formulas and the Devil’s Cause,
had no method of making himself agreeable! “Better that
women weep,” said Morton, “than that bearded men be forced
to weep.” Knox was the constitutional opposition-party in
Scotland: the Nobles of the country, called by their station to
take that post, were not found in it; Knox had to go, or no
make in her own palace, to reprove her there, have been much
commented upon. Such cruelty, such coarseness fills us with
indignation. On reading the actual narrative of the business,
what Knox said, and what Knox meant, I must say one’s tragic
feeling is rather disappointed. They are not so coarse, these
speeches; they seem to me about as fine as the circumstances
would permit! Knox was not there to do the courtier; he came
on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his
with the Queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and
essence of them altogether. It was unfortunately not possible
to be polite with the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved
one. The hapless Queen;—but the still more hapless Country, if she were made happy! Mary herself was not without
sharpness enough, among her other qualities: “Who are you,”
said she once, “that presume to school the nobles and sovereign of this realm?”—”Madam, a subject born within the
same,” answered he. Reasonably answered! If the “subject” have
truth to speak, it is not the “subject’s” footing that will fail
him here.—
We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good
that each of us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after
all the talk there is and has been about it, what is tolerance?
Tolerance has to tolerate the unessential; and to see well what
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that is. Tolerance has to be noble, measured, just in its very
wrath, when it can tolerate no longer. But, on the whole, we
are not altogether here to tolerate! We are here to resist, to control and vanquish withal. We do not “tolerate” Falsehoods,
Thieveries, Iniquities, when they fasten on us; we say to them,
Thou art false, thou art not tolerable! We are here to extinguish
Falsehoods, and put an end to them, in some wise way! I will
not quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our
great concern. In this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant.
man; but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such
alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pulling
down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious rioting
demagogue: precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine! Knox
wanted no pulling down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy
and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men. Tumult
was not his element; it was the tragic feature of his life that he
was forced to dwell so much in that. Every such man is the
A man sent to row in French Galleys, and such like, for
teaching the Truth in his own land, cannot always be in the
mildest humor! I am not prepared to say that Knox had a soft
temper; nor do I know that he had what we call an ill temper.
An ill nature he decidedly had not. Kind honest affections
dwelt in the much-enduring, hard-worn, ever-battling man.
That he could rebuke Queens, and had such weight among
those proud turbulent Nobles, proud enough whatever else
they were; and could maintain to the end a kind of virtual
Presidency and Sovereignty in that wild realm, he who was
only “a subject born within the same:” this of itself will prove
to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean acrid
born enemy of Disorder; hates to be in it: but what then?
Smooth Falsehood is not Order; it is the general sum-total of
Disorder. Order is Truth,—each thing standing on the basis
that belongs to it: Order and Falsehood cannot subsist together.
Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him; which I like much, in combination with his other
qualities. He has a true eye for the ridiculous. His History,
with its rough earnestness, is curiously enlivened with this.
When the two Prelates, entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel
about precedence; march rapidly up, take to hustling one another, twitching one another’s rochets, and at last flourishing
their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him
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every way! Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone; though there
is enough of that too. But a true, loving, illuminating laugh
mounts up over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would
say, a laugh in the eyes most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high, brother also to the low; sincere
in his sympathy with both. He had his pipe of Bourdeaux
too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his; a cheery
social man, with faces that loved him! They go far wrong
who think this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fa-
Principalities; in defeat, contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as an exile. A sore fight: but he
won it. “Have you hope?” they asked him in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger,
“pointed upwards with his finger,” and so died. Honor to
him! His works have not died. The letter of his work dies, as
of all men’s; but the spirit of it never.
One word more as to the letter of Knox’s work. The unforgivable offence in him is, that he wished to set up Priests over
natic. Not at all: he is one of the solidest of men. Practical,
cautious-hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly
discerning man. In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present: a certain sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough; and a stouter heart than he
himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over
many things which do not vitally concern him,—”They? what
are they?” But the thing which does vitally concern him, that
thing he will speak of; and in a tone the whole world shall be
made to hear: all the more emphatic for his long silence.
This Prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man!—He
had a sore fight of an existence; wrestling with Popes and
the head of Kings. In other words, he strove to make the
Government of Scotland a Theocracy. This indeed is properly
the sum of his offences, the essential sin; for which what pardon can there be? It is most true, he did, at bottom, consciously or unconsciously, mean a Theocracy, or Government
of God. He did mean that Kings and Prime Ministers, and all
manner of persons, in public or private, diplomatizing or
whatever else they might be doing, should walk according to
the Gospel of Christ, and understand that this was their Law,
supreme over all laws. He hoped once to see such a thing
realized; and the Petition, Thy Kingdom come, no longer an
empty word. He was sore grieved when he saw greedy worldly
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Barons clutch hold of the Church’s property; when he expostulated that it was not secular property, that it was spiritual
property, and should be turned to true churchly uses, education, schools, worship;—and the Regent Murray had to answer, with a shrug of the shoulders, “It is a devout imagination!” This was Knox’s scheme of right and truth; this he
zealously endeavored after, to realize it. If we think his scheme
of truth was too narrow, was not true, we may rejoice that he
could not realize it; that it remained after two centuries of
formers, as I said, are by the nature of them Priests, and strive
for a Theocracy.
How far such Ideals can ever be introduced into Practice,
and at what point our impatience with their non-introduction ought to begin, is always a question. I think we may say
safely, Let them introduce themselves as far as they can contrive to do it! If they are the true faith of men, all men ought
to be more or less impatient always where they are not found
introduced. There will never be wanting Regent Murrays
effort, unrealizable, and is a “devout imagination” still. But
how shall we blame him for struggling to realize it? Theocracy, Government of God, is precisely the thing to be struggled
for! All Prophets, zealous Priests, are there for that purpose.
Hildebrand wished a Theocracy; Cromwell wished it, fought
for it; Mahomet attained it. Nay, is it not what all zealous
men, whether called Priests, Prophets, or whatsoever else called,
do essentially wish, and must wish? That right and truth, or
God’s Law, reign supreme among men, this is the Heavenly
Ideal (well named in Knox’s time, and namable in all times, a
revealed “Will of God”) towards which the Reformer will
insist that all be more and more approximated. All true Re-
enough to shrug their shoulders, and say, “A devout imagination!” We will praise the Hero-priest rather, who does what is
in him to bring them in; and wears out, in toil, calumny,
contradiction, a noble life, to make a God’s Kingdom of this
Earth. The Earth will not become too godlike!
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[May 19, 1840.]
LECTURE V.
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS.
JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS.
H
ERO-GODS,
PROPHETS, POETS, PRIESTS are forms
of Heroism that belong to the old ages, make
their appearance in the remotest times; some of
them have ceased to be possible long since, and cannot any
more show themselves in this world. The Hero as Man of
Letters, again, of which class we are to speak to-day, is altogether a product of these new ages; and so long as the wondrous art of Writing, or of Ready-writing which we call Printing, subsists, he may be expected to continue, as one of the
main forms of Heroism for all future ages. He is, in various
respects, a very singular phenomenon.
He is new, I say; he has hardly lasted above a century in the
world yet. Never, till about a hundred years ago, was there
seen any figure of a Great Soul living apart in that anomalous
manner; endeavoring to speak forth the inspiration that was
in him by Printed Books, and find place and subsistence by
what the world would please to give him for doing that. Much
had been sold and bought, and left to make its own bargain
in the market-place; but the inspired wisdom of a Heroic
Soul never till then, in that naked manner. He, with his copyrights and copy-wrongs, in his squalid garret, in his rusty coat;
ruling (for this is what he does), from his grave, after death,
whole nations and generations who would, or would not,
give him bread while living,—is a rather curious spectacle!
Few shapes of Heroism can be more unexpected.
Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into
strange shapes: the world knows not well at any time what to
do with him, so foreign is his aspect in the world! It seemed
absurd to us, that men, in their rude admiration, should take
some wise great Odin for a god, and worship him as such;
some wise great Mahomet for one god-inspired, and religiously
follow his Law for twelve centuries: but that a wise great
Johnson, a Burns, a Rousseau, should be taken for some idle
nondescript, extant in the world to amuse idleness, and have
a few coins and applauses thrown him, that he might live
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thereby; this perhaps, as before hinted, will one day seem a
still absurder phasis of things!—Meanwhile, since it is the
spiritual always that determines the material, this same Manof-Letters Hero must be regarded as our most important
modern person. He, such as he may be, is the soul of all.
What he teaches, the whole world will do and make. The
world’s manner of dealing with him is the most significant
feature of the world’s general position. Looking well at his
life, we may get a glance, as deep as is readily possible for us,
the True, Divine and Eternal, which exists always, unseen to
most, under the Temporary, Trivial: his being is in that; he
declares that abroad, by act or speech as it may be in declaring
himself abroad. His life, as we said before, is a piece of the
everlasting heart of Nature herself: all men’s life is,—but the
weak many know not the fact, and are untrue to it, in most
times; the strong few are strong, heroic, perennial, because it
cannot be hidden from them. The Man of Letters, like every
Hero, is there to proclaim this in such sort as he can. Intrinsi-
into the life of those singular centuries which have produced
him, in which we ourselves live and work.
There are genuine Men of Letters, and not genuine; as in
every kind there is a genuine and a spurious. If hero be taken
to mean genuine, then I say the Hero as Man of Letters will
be found discharging a function for us which is ever honorable, ever the highest; and was once well known to be the
highest. He is uttering forth, in such way as he has, the inspired soul of him; all that a man, in any case, can do. I say
inspired; for what we call “originality,” “sincerity,” “genius,”
the heroic quality we have no good name for, signifies that.
The Hero is he who lives in the inward sphere of things, in
cally it is the same function which the old generations named
a man Prophet, Priest, Divinity for doing; which all manner
of Heroes, by speech or by act, are sent into the world to do.
Fichte the German Philosopher delivered, some forty years
ago at Erlangen, a highly remarkable Course of Lectures on
this subject: “Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten, On the Nature
of the Literary Man.” Fichte, in conformity with the Transcendental Philosophy, of which he was a distinguished teacher,
declares first: That all things which we see or work with in
this Earth, especially we ourselves and all persons, are as a
kind of vesture or sensuous Appearance: that under all there
lies, as the essence of them, what he calls the “Divine Idea of
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the World;” this is the Reality which “lies at the bottom of all
Appearance.” To the mass of men no such Divine Idea is recognizable in the world; they live merely, says Fichte, among
the superficialities, practicalities and shows of the world, not
dreaming that there is anything divine under them. But the
Man of Letters is sent hither specially that he may discern for
himself, and make manifest to us, this same Divine Idea: in
every new generation it will manifest itself in a new dialect;
and he is there for the purpose of doing that. Such is Fichte’s
from age to age, teaching all men that a God is still present
in their life, that all “Appearance,” whatsoever we see in the
world, is but as a vesture for the “Divine Idea of the World,”
for “that which lies at the bottom of Appearance.” In the
true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not
by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the
world’s Priest;—guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its
dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time. Fichte discriminates with sharp zeal the true Literary Man, what we here
phraseology; with which we need not quarrel. It is his way of
naming what I here, by other words, am striving imperfectly
to name; what there is at present no name for: The unspeakable Divine Significance, full of splendor, of wonder and terror, that lies in the being of every man, of every thing,—the
Presence of the God who made every man and thing.
Mahomet taught this in his dialect; Odin in his: it is the thing
which all thinking hearts, in one dialect or another, are here
to teach.
Fichte calls the Man of Letters, therefore, a Prophet, or as
he prefers to phrase it, a Priest, continually unfolding the
Godlike to men: Men of Letters are a perpetual Priesthood,
call the Hero as Man of Letters, from multitudes of false
unheroic. Whoever lives not wholly in this Divine Idea, or
living partially in it, struggles not, as for the one good, to
live wholly in it,—he is, let him live where else he like, in
what pomps and prosperities he like, no Literary Man; he
is, says Fichte, a “Bungler, Stumper.” Or at best, if he belong
to the prosaic provinces, he may be a “Hodman; “ Fichte
even calls him elsewhere a “Nonentity,” and has in short no
mercy for him, no wish that he should continue happy
among us! This is Fichte’s notion of the Man of Letters. It
means, in its own form, precisely what we here mean.
In this point of view, I consider that, for the last hundred
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years, by far the notablest of all Literary Men is Fichte’s countryman, Goethe. To that man too, in a strange way, there was
given what we may call a life in the Divine Idea of the World;
vision of the inward divine mystery: and strangely, out of his
Books, the world rises imaged once more as godlike, the
workmanship and temple of a God. Illuminated all, not in
fierce impure fire-splendor as of Mahomet, but in mild celestial radiance;—really a Prophecy in these most unprophetic
times; to my mind, by far the greatest, though one of the
Goethe, it were worse than useless to attempt speaking of
him in this case. Speak as I might, Goethe, to the great majority of you, would remain problematic, vague; no impression but a false one could be realized. Him we must leave to
future times. Johnson, Burns, Rousseau, three great figures
from a prior time, from a far inferior state of circumstances,
will suit us better here. Three men of the Eighteenth Century; the conditions of their life far more resemble what those
of ours still are in England, than what Goethe’s in Germany
quietest, among all the great things that have come to pass in
them. Our chosen specimen of the Hero as Literary Man
would be this Goethe. And it were a very pleasant plan for
me here to discourse of his heroism: for I consider him to be
a true Hero; heroic in what he said and did, and perhaps still
more in what he did not say and did not do; to me a noble
spectacle: a great heroic ancient man, speaking and keeping
silence as an ancient Hero, in the guise of a most modern,
high-bred, high-cultivated Man of Letters! We have had no
such spectacle; no man capable of affording such, for the last
hundred and fifty years.
But at present, such is the general state of knowledge about
were. Alas, these men did not conquer like him; they fought
bravely, and fell. They were not heroic bringers of the light,
but heroic seekers of it. They lived under galling conditions;
struggling as under mountains of impediment, and could not
unfold themselves into clearness, or victorious interpretation
of that “Divine Idea.” It is rather the Tombs of three Literary
Heroes that I have to show you. There are the monumental
heaps, under which three spiritual giants lie buried. Very
mournful, but also great and full of interest for us. We will
linger by them for a while.
COMPLAINT IS OFTEN MADE, in these times, of what we call the
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disorganized condition of society: how ill many forces of society fulfil their work; how many powerful are seen working
in a wasteful, chaotic, altogether unarranged manner. It is too
just a complaint, as we all know. But perhaps if we look at
this of Books and the Writers of Books, we shall find here, as
it were, the summary of all other disorganizations;—a sort of
heart, from which, and to which all other confusion circulates in the world! Considering what Book writers do in the
world, and what the world does with Book writers, I should
nified appurtenances and furtherances, that therefrom a man
with the tongue may, to best advantage, address his fellowmen. They felt that this was the most important thing; that
without this there was no good thing. It is a right pious
work, that of theirs; beautiful to behold! But now with the
art of Writing, with the art of Printing, a total change has
come over that business. The Writer of a Book, is not he a
Preacher preaching not to this parish or that, on this day or
that, but to all men in all times and places? Surely it is of the
say, It is the most anomalous thing the world at present has
to show.—We should get into a sea far beyond sounding, did
we attempt to give account of this: but we must glance at it
for the sake of our subject. The worst element in the life of
these three Literary Heroes was, that they found their business and position such a chaos. On the beaten road there is
tolerable travelling; but it is sore work, and many have to
perish, fashioning a path through the impassable!
Our pious Fathers, feeling well what importance lay in
the speaking of man to men, founded churches, made endowments, regulations; everywhere in the civilized world
there is a Pulpit, environed with all manner of complex dig-
last importance that he do his work right, whoever do it
wrong;—that the eye report not falsely, for then all the other
members are astray! Well; how he may do his work, whether
he do it right or wrong, or do it at all, is a point which no
man in the world has taken the pains to think of. To a certain shopkeeper, trying to get some money for his books, if
lucky, he is of some importance; to no other man of any.
Whence he came, whither he is bound, by what ways he
arrived, by what he might be furthered on his course, no
one asks. He is an accident in society. He wanders like a
wild Ishmaelite, in a world of which he is as the spiritual
light, either the guidance or the misguidance!
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Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all
things man has devised. Odin’s Runes were the first form of
the work of a Hero; Books written words, are still miraculous
Runes, the latest form! In Books lies the soul of the whole
Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the
body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like
a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbors and arsenals, vast
cities, high-domed, many-engined,—they are precious, great:
but what do they become? Agamemnon, the many
“Clifford” acted: the foolish Theorem of Life, stamped into
those young brains, comes out as a solid Practice one day.
Consider whether any Rune in the wildest imagination of Mythologist ever did such wonders as, on the actual firm Earth,
some Books have done! What built St. Paul’s Cathedral? Look
at the heart of the matter, it was that divine Hebrew BOOK,—
the word partly of the man Moses, an outlaw tending his
Midianitish herds, four thousand years ago, in the wildernesses of Sinai! It is the strangest of things, yet nothing is
Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece; all is gone now to
some ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks:
but the Books of Greece! There Greece, to every thinker, still
very literally lives: can be called up again into life. No magic
Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done,
thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in
the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men.
Do not Books still accomplish miracles, as Runes were fabled
to do? They persuade men. Not the wretchedest circulatinglibrary novel, which foolish girls thumb and con in remote
villages, but will help to regulate the actual practical weddings and households of those foolish girls. So “Celia” felt, so
truer. With the art of Writing, of which Printing is a simple,
an inevitable and comparatively insignificant corollary, the true
reign of miracles for mankind commenced. It related, with a
wondrous new contiguity and perpetual closeness, the Past
and Distant with the Present in time and place; all times and
all places with this our actual Here and Now. All things were
altered for men; all modes of important work of men: teaching, preaching, governing, and all else.
To look at Teaching, for instance. Universities are a notable,
respectable product of the modern ages. Their existence too
is modified, to the very basis of it, by the existence of Books.
Universities arose while there were yet no Books procurable;
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while a man, for a single Book, had to give an estate of land.
That, in those circumstances, when a man had some knowledge to communicate, he should do it by gathering the learners round him, face to face, was a necessity for him. If you
wanted to know what Abelard knew, you must go and listen
to Abelard. Thousands, as many as thirty thousand, went to
hear Abelard and that metaphysical theology of his. And now
for any other teacher who had also something of his own to
teach, there was a great convenience opened: so many thou-
cility of getting Books, the whole conditions of the business
from top to bottom were changed. Once invent Printing,
you metamorphosed all Universities, or superseded them! The
Teacher needed not now to gather men personally round him,
that he might speak to them what he knew: print it in a Book,
and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own
fireside, much more effectually to learn it!—Doubtless there
is still peculiar virtue in Speech; even writers of Books may
still, in some circumstances, find it convenient to speak also,—
sands eager to learn were already assembled yonder; of all places
the best place for him was that. For any third teacher it was
better still; and grew ever the better, the more teachers there
came. It only needed now that the King took notice of this
new phenomenon; combined or agglomerated the various
schools into one school; gave it edifices, privileges, encouragements, and named it Universitas, or School of all Sciences:
the University of Paris, in its essential characters, was there.
The model of all subsequent Universities; which down even
to these days, for six centuries now, have gone on to found
themselves. Such, I conceive, was the origin of Universities.
It is clear, however, that with this simple circumstance, fa-
witness our present meeting here! There is, one would say,
and must ever remain while man has a tongue, a distinct province for Speech as well as for Writing and Printing. In regard
to all things this must remain; to Universities among others.
But the limits of the two have nowhere yet been pointed out,
ascertained; much less put in practice: the University which
would completely take in that great new fact, of the existence
of Printed Books, and stand on a clear footing for the Nineteenth Century as the Paris one did for the Thirteenth, has
not yet come into existence. If we think of it, all that a University, or final highest School can do for us, is still but what
the first School began doing,—teach us to read. We learn to
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read, in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the
alphabet and letters of all manner of Books. But the place
where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is
the Books themselves! It depends on what we read, after all
manner of Professors have done their best for us. The true
University of these days is a Collection of Books.
But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is changed,
in its preaching, in its working, by the introduction of Books.
The Church is the working recognized Union of our Priests
into our hearts,—is not this essentially, if we will understand
it, of the nature of worship? There are many, in all countries,
who, in this confused time, have no other method of worship. He who, in any way, shows us better than we knew
before that a lily of the fields is beautiful, does he not show it
us as an effluence of the Fountain of all Beauty; as the handwriting, made visible there, of the great Maker of the Universe? He has sung for us, made us sing with him, a little verse
of a sacred Psalm. Essentially so. How much more he who
or Prophets, of those who by wise teaching guide the souls of
men. While there was no Writing, even while there was no
Easy-writing, or Printing, the preaching of the voice was the
natural sole method of performing this. But now with Books!
—He that can write a true Book, to persuade England, is not
he the Bishop and Archbishop, the Primate of England and
of All England? I many a time say, the writers of Newspapers,
Pamphlets, Poems, Books, these are the real working effective Church of a modern country. Nay not only our preaching, but even our worship, is not it too accomplished by means
of Printed Books? The noble sentiment which a gifted soul
has clothed for us in melodious words, which brings melody
sings, who says, or in any way brings home to our heart the
noble doings, feelings, darings and endurances of a brother
man! He has verily touched our hearts as with a live coal from
the altar. Perhaps there is no worship more authentic.
Literature, so far as it is Literature, is an “apocalypse of Nature,” a revealing of the “open secret.” It may well enough be
named, in Fichte’s style, a “continuous revelation” of the Godlike in the Terrestrial and Common. The Godlike does ever,
in very truth, endure there; is brought out, now in this dialect, now in that, with various degrees of clearness: all true
gifted Singers and Speakers are, consciously or unconsciously,
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ward and perverse, may have touches of it; nay the withered
mockery of a French sceptic,—his mockery of the False, a
love and worship of the True. How much more the sphereharmony of a Shakspeare, of a Goethe; the cathedral music of
a Milton! They are something too, those humble genuine
lark-notes of a Burns,—skylark, starting from the humble
furrow, far overhead into the blue depths, and singing to us
so genuinely there! For all true singing is of the nature of
worship; as indeed all true working may be said to be,—
altogether? Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament;
but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of
speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact,—very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too.
Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often,
is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is
inevitable. Writing brings Printing; brings universal everyday
extempore Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak,
whereof such singing is but the record, and fit melodious representation, to us. Fragments of a real “Church Liturgy” and
“Body of Homilies,” strangely disguised from the common
eye, are to be found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of
Printed Speech we loosely call Literature! Books are our
Church too.
Or turning now to the Government of men. Witenagemote,
old Parliament, was a great thing. The affairs of the nation
were there deliberated and decided; what we were to do as a
nation. But does not, though the name Parliament subsists,
the parliamentary debate go on now, everywhere and at all
times, in a far more comprehensive way, out of Parliament
speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch
of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all
acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures. the requisite thing is, that he have a tongue
which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite.
The nation is governed by all that has tongue in the nation:
Democracy is virtually there. Add only, that whatsoever power
exists will have itself, by and by, organized; working secretly
under bandages, obscurations, obstructions, it will never rest
till it get to work free, unencumbered, visible to all. Democracy virtually extant will insist on becoming palpably extant.—
On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of
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the things which man can do or make here below, by far the
most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the things we
call Books! Those poor bits of rag-paper with black ink on
them;—from the Daily Newspaper to the sacred Hebrew
BOOK, what have they not done, what are they not doing!—
For indeed, whatever be the outward form of the thing (bits
of paper, as we say, and black ink), is it not verily, at bottom,
the highest act of man’s faculty that produces a Book? It is the
Thought of man; the true thaumaturgic virtue; by which man
All this, of the importance and supreme importance of the
Man of Letters in modern Society, and how the Press is to
such a degree superseding the Pulpit, the Senate, the Senatus
Academicus and much else, has been admitted for a good while;
and recognized often enough, in late times, with a sort of
sentimental triumph and wonderment. It seems to me, the
Sentimental by and by will have to give place to the Practical.
If Men of Letters are so incalculably influential, actually performing such work for us from age to age, and even from day
works all things whatsoever. All that he does, and brings to
pass, is the vesture of a Thought. This London City, with all
its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a Thought, but
millions of Thoughts made into One;—a huge immeasurable Spirit of a THOUGHT, embodied in brick, in iron,
smoke, dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches,
Katherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not a brick was made
but some man had to think of the making of that brick.—
The thing we called “bits of paper with traces of black ink,” is
the purest embodiment a Thought of man can have. No wonder it is, in all ways, the activest and noblest.
to day, then I think we may conclude that Men of Letters
will not always wander like unrecognized unregulated
Ishmaelites among us! Whatsoever thing, as I said above, has
virtual unnoticed power will cast off its wrappages, bandages,
and step forth one day with palpably articulated, universally
visible power. That one man wear the clothes, and take the
wages, of a function which is done by quite another: there
can be no profit in this; this is not right, it is wrong. And yet,
alas, the making of it right,—what a business, for long times
to come! Sure enough, this that we call Organization of the
Literary Guild is still a great way off, encumbered with all
manner of complexities. If you asked me what were the best
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possible organization for the Men of Letters in modern society; the arrangement of furtherance and regulation, grounded
the most accurately on the actual facts of their position and
of the world’s position,—I should beg to say that the problem far exceeded my faculty! It is not one man’s faculty; it is
that of many successive men turned earnestly upon it, that
will bring out even an approximate solution. What the best
arrangement were, none of us could say. But if you ask, Which
is the worst? I answer: This which we now have, that Chaos
opment of the spirit of Christianity. It was itself founded on
Poverty, on Sorrow, Contradiction, Crucifixion, every species of worldly Distress and Degradation. We may say, that he
who has not known those things, and learned from them the
priceless lessons they have to teach, has missed a good opportunity of schooling. To beg, and go barefoot, in coarse woollen
cloak with a rope round your loins, and be despised of all the
world, was no beautiful business;—nor an honorable one in
any eye, till the nobleness of those who did so had made it
should sit umpire in it; this is the worst. To the best, or any
good one, there is yet a long way.
One remark I must not omit, That royal or parliamentary
grants of money are by no means the chief thing wanted! To
give our Men of Letters stipends, endowments and all furtherance of cash, will do little towards the business. On the
whole, one is weary of hearing about the omnipotence of
money. I will say rather that, for a genuine man, it is no evil
to be poor; that there ought to be Literary Men poor,—to
show whether they are genuine or not! Mendicant Orders,
bodies of good men doomed to beg, were instituted in the
Christian Church; a most natural and even necessary devel-
honored of some!
Begging is not in our course at the present time: but for the
rest of it, who will say that a Johnson is not perhaps the better for being poor? It is needful for him, at all rates, to know
that outward profit, that success of any kind is not the goal he
has to aim at. Pride, vanity, ill-conditioned egoism of all sorts,
are bred in his heart, as in every heart; need, above all, to be
cast out of his heart,—to be, with whatever pangs, torn out
of it, cast forth from it, as a thing worthless. Byron, born rich
and noble, made out even less than Burns, poor and plebeian.
Who knows but, in that same “best possible organization” as
yet far off, Poverty may still enter as an important element?
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What if our Men of Letters, men setting up to be Spiritual
Heroes, were still then, as they now are, a kind of “involuntary monastic order;” bound still to this same ugly Poverty,—
till they had tried what was in it too, till they had learned to
make it too do for them! Money, in truth, can do much, but
it cannot do all. We must know the province of it, and confine it there; and even spurn it back, when it wishes to get
farther.
Besides, were the money-furtherances, the proper season for
at the mercy of blind Chance; a whirl of distracted atoms, one
cancelling the other; one of the thousand arriving saved, nine
hundred and ninety-nine lost by the way; your royal Johnson
languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed to the yoke of Printer
Cave; your Burns dying broken-hearted as a Gauger; your
Rousseau driven into mad exasperation, kindling French Revolutions by his paradoxes: this, as we said, is clearly enough the
worst regulation. The best, alas, is far from us!
And yet there can be no doubt but it is coming; advancing
them, the fit assigner of them, all settled,—how is the Burns
to be recognized that merits these? He must pass through the
ordeal, and prove himself. This ordeal; this wild welter of a
chaos which is called Literary Life: this too is a kind of ordeal! There is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from the
lower classes of society, towards the upper regions and rewards
of society, must ever continue. Strong men are born there,
who ought to stand elsewhere than there. The manifold, inextricably complex, universal struggle of these constitutes, and
must constitute, what is called the progress of society. For
Men of Letters, as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate
that struggle? There is the whole question. To leave it as it is,
on us, as yet hidden in the bosom of centuries: this is a prophecy one can risk. For so soon as men get to discern the importance of a thing, they do infallibly set about arranging it, facilitating, forwarding it; and rest not till, in some approximate degree, they have accomplished that. I say, of all Priesthoods, Aristocracies, Governing Classes at present extant in
the world, there is no class comparable for importance to that
Priesthood of the Writers of Books. This is a fact which he
who runs may read,—and draw inferences from. “Literature
will take care of itself,” answered Mr. Pitt, when applied to
for some help for Burns. “Yes,” adds Mr. Southey, “it will
take care of itself; and of you too, if you do not look to it!”
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The result to individual Men of Letters is not the momentous one; they are but individuals, an infinitesimal fraction of
the great body; they can struggle on, and live or else die, as they
have been wont. But it deeply concerns the whole society,
whether it will set its light on high places, to walk thereby; or
trample it under foot, and scatter it in all ways of wild waste
(not without conflagration), as heretofore! Light is the one thing
wanted for the world. Put wisdom in the head of the world,
the world will fight its battle victoriously, and be the best world
would be rash to say, one understood how this was done, or
with what degree of success it was done. All such things must
be very unsuccessful; yet a small degree of success is precious;
the very attempt how precious! There does seem to be, all
over China, a more or less active search everywhere to discover the men of talent that grow up in the young generation. Schools there are for every one: a foolish sort of training, yet still a sort. The youths who distinguish themselves in
the lower school are promoted into favorable stations in the
man can make it. I called this anomaly of a disorganic Literary
Class the heart of all other anomalies, at once product and parent; some good arrangement for that would be as the punctum
saliens of a new vitality and just arrangement for all. Already, in
some European countries, in France, in Prussia, one traces some
beginnings of an arrangement for the Literary Class; indicating
the gradual possibility of such. I believe that it is possible; that
it will have to be possible.
By far the most interesting fact I hear about the Chinese is
one on which we cannot arrive at clearness, but which excites
endless curiosity even in the dim state: this namely, that they
do attempt to make their Men of Letters their Governors! It
higher, that they may still more distinguish themselves,—forward and forward: it appears to be out of these that the Official Persons, and incipient Governors, are taken. These are
they whom they try first, whether they can govern or not.
And surely with the best hope: for they are the men that have
already shown intellect. Try them: they have not governed or
administered as yet; perhaps they cannot; but there is no doubt
they have some Understanding,—without which no man can!
Neither is Understanding a tool, as we are too apt to figure; “it
is a hand which can handle any tool.” Try these men: they are
of all others the best worth trying.—Surely there is no kind
of government, constitution, revolution, social apparatus or
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arrangement, that I know of in this world, so promising to
one’s scientific curiosity as this. The man of intellect at the
top of affairs: this is the aim of all constitutions and revolutions, if they have any aim. For the man of true intellect, as I
assert and believe always, is the noble-hearted man withal,
the true, just, humane and valiant man. Get him for governor, all is got; fail to get him, though you had Constitutions
plentiful as blackberries, and a Parliament in every village,
there is nothing yet got!—
These things look strange, truly; and are not such as we
commonly speculate upon. But we are fallen into strange
times; these things will require to be speculated upon; to be
rendered practicable, to be in some way put in practice. These,
and many others. On all hands of us, there is the announcement, audible enough, that the old Empire of Routine has
ended; that to say a thing has long been, is no reason for its
continuing to be. The things which have been are fallen into
decay, are fallen into incompetence; large masses of mankind,
in every society of our Europe, are no longer capable of living
at all by the things which have been. When millions of men
can no longer by their utmost exertion gain food for them-
selves, and “the third man for thirty-six weeks each year is
short of third-rate potatoes,” the things which have been must
decidedly prepare to alter themselves!—I will now quit this
of the organization of Men of Letters.
ALAS, THE EVIL that pressed heaviest on those Literary Heroes
of ours was not the want of organization for Men of Letters,
but a far deeper one; out of which, indeed, this and so many
other evils for the Literary Man, and for all men, had, as from
their fountain, taken rise. That our Hero as Man of Letters
had to travel without highway, companionless, through an
inorganic chaos,—and to leave his own life and faculty lying
there, as a partial contribution towards pushing some highway through it: this, had not his faculty itself been so perverted and paralyzed, he might have put up with, might have
considered to be but the common lot of Heroes. His fatal
misery was the spiritual paralysis, so we may name it, of the
Age in which his life lay; whereby his life too, do what he
might, was half paralyzed! The Eighteenth was a Sceptical
Century; in which little word there is a whole Pandora’s Box
of miseries. Scepticism means not intellectual Doubt alone,
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but moral Doubt; all sorts of infidelity, insincerity, spiritual
paralysis. Perhaps, in few centuries that one could specify since
the world began, was a life of Heroism more difficult for a
man. That was not an age of Faith,—an age of Heroes! The
very possibility of Heroism had been, as it were, formally
abnegated in the minds of all. Heroism was gone forever;
Triviality, Formulism and Commonplace were come forever.
The “age of miracles” had been, or perhaps had not been; but
it was not any longer. An effete world; wherein Wonder, Great-
the clank of spinning-jennies, and parliamentary majorities;
and, on the whole, that it is not a machine at all!—The old
Norse Heathen had a truer motion of God’s-world than these
poor Machine-Sceptics: the old Heathen Norse were sincere
men. But for these poor Sceptics there was no sincerity, no
truth. Half-truth and hearsay was called truth. Truth, for most
men, meant plausibility; to be measured by the number of
votes you could get. They had lost any notion that sincerity
was possible, or of what sincerity was. How many Plausibili-
ness, Godhood could not now dwell;—in one word, a godless world!
How mean, dwarfish are their ways of thinking, in this
time,—compared not with the Christian Shakspeares and
Miltons, but with the old Pagan Skalds, with any species of
believing men! The living TREE Igdrasil, with the melodious prophetic waving of its world-wide boughs, deep-rooted
as Hela, has died out into the clanking of a World-MACHINE. “Tree” and “Machine:” contrast these two things. I,
for my share, declare the world to be no machine! I say that it
does not go by wheel-and-pinion “motives” self-interests,
checks, balances; that there is something far other in it than
ties asking, with unaffected surprise and the air of offended
virtue, What! am not I sincere? Spiritual Paralysis, I say, nothing left but a Mechanical life, was the characteristic of that
century. For the common man, unless happily he stood below his century and belonged to another prior one, it was
impossible to be a Believer, a Hero; he lay buried, unconscious, under these baleful influences. To the strongest man,
only with infinite struggle and confusion was it possible to
work himself half loose; and lead as it were, in an enchanted,
most tragical way, a spiritual death-in-life, and be a Half-Hero!
Scepticism is the name we give to all this; as the chief symptom, as the chief origin of all this. Concerning which so much
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were to be said! It would take many Discourses, not a small
fraction of one Discourse, to state what one feels about that
Eighteenth Century and its ways. As indeed this, and the like
of this, which we now call Scepticism, is precisely the black
malady and life-foe, against which all teaching and discoursing since man’s life began has directed itself: the battle of Belief against Unbelief is the never-ending battle! Neither is it in
the way of crimination that one would wish to speak. Scepticism, for that century, we must consider as the decay of old
himself, and even the creed of Bentham, seems to me comparatively worthy of praise. It is a determinate being what all
the world, in a cowardly half-and-half manner, was tending
to be. Let us have the crisis; we shall either have death or the
cure. I call this gross, steam-engine Utilitarianism an approach
towards new Faith. It was a laying-down of cant; a saying to
oneself: “Well then, this world is a dead iron machine, the
god of it Gravitation and selfish Hunger; let us see what, by
checking and balancing, and good adjustment of tooth and
ways of believing, the preparation afar off for new better and
wider ways,—an inevitable thing. We will not blame men for
it; we will lament their hard fate. We will understand that
destruction of old forms is not destruction of everlasting substances; that Scepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as we see it,
is not an end but a beginning.
The other day speaking, without prior purpose that way, of
Bentham’s theory of man and man’s life, I chanced to call it a
more beggarly one than Mahomet’s. I am bound to say, now
when it is once uttered, that such is my deliberate opinion.
Not that one would mean offence against the man Jeremy
Bentham, or those who respect and believe him. Bentham
pinion, can be made of it!” Benthamism has something complete, manful, in such fearless committal of itself to what it
finds true; you may call it Heroic, though a Heroism with its
eyes put out! It is the culminating point, and fearless ultimatum, of what lay in the half-and-half state, pervading man’s
whole existence in that Eighteenth Century. It seems to me,
all deniers of Godhood, and all lip-believers of it, are bound
to be Benthamites, if they have courage and honesty.
Benthamism is an eyeless Heroism: the Human Species, like a
hapless blinded Samson grinding in the Philistine Mill, clasps
convulsively the pillars of its Mill; brings huge ruin down,
but ultimately deliverance withal. Of Bentham I meant to
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say no harm.
But this I do say, and would wish all men to know and lay
to heart, that he who discerns nothing but Mechanism in the
Universe has in the fatalest way missed the secret of the Universe altogether. That all Godhood should vanish out of men’s
conception of this Universe seems to me precisely the most
brutal error,—I will not disparage Heathenism by calling it a
Heathen error,—that men could fall into. It is not true; it is
false at the very heart of it. A man who thinks so will think
Atheism, in brief;—which does indeed frightfully punish itself. The man, I say, is become spiritually a paralytic man; this
godlike Universe a dead mechanical steam-engine, all working by motives, checks, balances, and I know not what;
wherein, as in the detestable belly of some Phalaris’-Bull of
his own contriving, he the poor Phalaris sits miserably dying!
Belief I define to be the healthy act of a man’s mind. It is a
mysterious indescribable process, that of getting to believe;—
indescribable, as all vital acts are. We have our mind given us,
wrong about all things in the world; this original sin will vitiate all other conclusions he can form. One might call it the
most lamentable of Delusions,—not forgetting Witchcraft
itself! Witchcraft worshipped at least a living Devil; but this
worships a dead iron Devil; no God, not even a Devil! Whatsoever is noble, divine, inspired, drops thereby out of life.
There remains everywhere in life a despicable caput-mortuum;
the mechanical hull, all soul fled out of it. How can a man act
heroically? The “Doctrine of Motives” will teach him that it
is, under more or less disguise, nothing but a wretched love
of Pleasure, fear of Pain; that Hunger, of applause, of cash, of
whatsoever victual it may be, is the ultimate fact of man’s life.
not that it may cavil and argue, but that it may see into something, give us clear belief and understanding about something,
whereon we are then to proceed to act. Doubt, truly, is not
itself a crime. Certainly we do not rush out, clutch up the
first thing we find, and straightway believe that! All manner
of doubt, inquiry, [Gr.] skepsis as it is named, about all manner of objects, dwells in every reasonable mind. It is the mystic working of the mind, on the object it is getting to know
and believe. Belief comes out of all this, above ground, like
the tree from its hidden roots. But now if, even on common
things, we require that a man keep his doubts silent, and not
babble of them till they in some measure become affirmations
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or denials; how much more in regard to the highest things,
impossible to speak of in words at all! That a man parade his
doubt, and get to imagine that debating and logic (which
means at best only the manner of telling us your thought,
your belief or disbelief, about a thing) is the triumph and true
work of what intellect he has: alas, this is as if you should
overturn the tree, and instead of green boughs, leaves and fruits,
show us ugly taloned roots turned up into the air,—and no
growth, only death and misery going on!
out; Quacks have come in. Accordingly, what Century, since
the end of the Roman world, which also was a time of scepticism, simulacra and universal decadence, so abounds with
Quacks as that Eighteenth? Consider them, with their tumid
sentimental vaporing about virtue, benevolence,—the
wretched Quack-squadron, Cagliostro at the head of them!
Few men were without quackery; they had got to consider it
a necessary ingredient and amalgam for truth. Chatham, our
brave Chatham himself, comes down to the House, all wrapt
For the Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is
moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A
man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things. A sad case for him when all that he
can manage to believe is something he can button in his pocket,
and with one or the other organ eat and digest! Lower than
that he will not get. We call those ages in which he gets so low
the mournfulest, sickest and meanest of all ages. The world’s
heart is palsied, sick: how can any limb of it be whole? Genuine Acting ceases in all departments of the world’s work; dexterous Similitude of Acting begins. The world’s wages are
pocketed, the world’s work is not done. Heroes have gone
and bandaged; he “has crawled out in great bodily suffering,”
and so on;—forgets, says Walpole, that he is acting the sick
man; in the fire of debate, snatches his arm from the sling,
and oratorically swings and brandishes it! Chatham himself
lives the strangest mimetic life, half-hero, half-quack, all along.
For indeed the world is full of dupes; and you have to gain
the world’s suffrage! How the duties of the world will be done
in that case, what quantities of error, which means failure,
which means sorrow and misery, to some and to many, will
gradually accumulate in all provinces of the world’s business,
we need not compute.
It seems to me, you lay your finger here on the heart of the
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world’s maladies, when you call it a Sceptical World. An insincere world; a godless untruth of a world! It is out of this, as
I consider, that the whole tribe of social pestilences, French
Revolutions, Chartisms, and what not, have derived their
being,—their chief necessity to be. This must alter. Till this
alter, nothing can beneficially alter. My one hope of the world,
my inexpugnable consolation in looking at the miseries of
the world, is that this is altering. Here and there one does
now find a man who knows, as of old, that this world is a
aside: Thou art not true; thou art not extant, only semblant;
go thy way!—Yes, hollow Formulism, gross Benthamism,
and other unheroic atheistic Insincerity is visibly and even rapidly declining. An unbelieving Eighteenth Century is but an
exception,—such as now and then occurs. I prophesy that the
world will once more become sincere; a believing world; with
many Heroes in it, a heroic world! It will then be a victorious
world; never till then.
Or indeed what of the world and its victories? Men speak
Truth, and no Plausibility and Falsity; that he himself is alive,
not dead or paralytic; and that the world is alive, instinct with
Godhood, beautiful and awful, even as in the beginning of
days! One man once knowing this, many men, all men, must
by and by come to know it. It lies there clear, for whosoever
will take the spectacles off his eyes and honestly look, to know!
For such a man the Unbelieving Century, with its unblessed
Products, is already past; a new century is already come. The
old unblessed Products and Performances, as solid as they look,
are Phantasms, preparing speedily to vanish. To this and the
other noisy, very great-looking Simulacrum with the whole
world huzzaing at its heels, he can say, composedly stepping
too much about the world. Each one of us here, let the world
go how it will, and be victorious or not victorious, has he not
a Life of his own to lead? One Life; a little gleam of Time
between two Eternities; no second chance to us forevermore!
It were well for us to live not as fools and simulacra, but as
wise and realities. The world’s being saved will not save us;
nor the world’s being lost destroy us. We should look to ourselves: there is great merit here in the “duty of staying at home”!
And, on the whole, to say truth, I never heard of “world’s”
being “saved” in any other way. That mania of saving worlds
is itself a piece of the Eighteenth Century with its windy sentimentalism. Let us not follow it too far. For the saving of
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the world I will trust confidently to the Maker of the world;
and look a little to my own saving, which I am more competent to!—In brief, for the world’s sake, and for our own, we
will rejoice greatly that Scepticism, Insincerity, Mechanical
Atheism, with all their poison-dews, are going, and as good
as gone.—
Now it was under such conditions, in those times of
Johnson, that our Men of Letters had to live. Times in which
there was properly no truth in life. Old truths had fallen nigh
of his strength. But to make out a victory, in those circumstances of our poor Hero as Man of Letters, was perhaps more
difficult than in any. Not obstruction, disorganization, Bookseller Osborne and Fourpence-halfpenny a day; not this alone;
but the light of his own soul was taken from him. No landmark on the Earth; and, alas, what is that to having no loadstar
in the Heaven! We need not wonder that none of those Three
men rose to victory. That they fought truly is the highest
praise. With a mournful sympathy we will contemplate, if
dumb; the new lay yet hidden, not trying to speak. That Man’s
Life here below was a Sincerity and Fact, and would forever
continue such, no new intimation, in that dusk of the world,
had yet dawned. No intimation; not even any French Revolution,—which we define to be a Truth once more, though a
Truth clad in hell-fire! How different was the Luther’s pilgrimage, with its assured goal, from the Johnson’s, girt with
mere traditions, suppositions, grown now incredible, unintelligible! Mahomet’s Formulas were of “wood waxed and
oiled,” and could be burnt out of one’s way: poor Johnson’s
were far more difficult to burn.—The strong man will ever
find work, which means difficulty, pain, to the full measure
not three living victorious Heroes, as I said, the Tombs of
three fallen Heroes! They fell for us too; making a way for us.
There are the mountains which they hurled abroad in their
confused War of the Giants; under which, their strength and
life spent, they now lie buried.
I HAVE ALREADY WRITTEN of these three Literary Heroes, expressly or incidentally; what I suppose is known to most of
you; what need not be spoken or written a second time. They
concern us here as the singular Prophets of that singular age;
for such they virtually were; and the aspect they and their
world exhibit, under this point of view, might lead us into
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reflections enough! I call them, all three, Genuine Men more
or less; faithfully, for most part unconsciously, struggling to
be genuine, and plant themselves on the everlasting truth of
things. This to a degree that eminently distinguishes them
from the poor artificial mass of their contemporaries; and
renders them worthy to be considered as Speakers, in some
measure, of the everlasting truth, as Prophets in that age of
theirs. By Nature herself a noble necessity was laid on them
to be so. They were men of such magnitude that they could
ter!—Johnson’s youth was poor, isolated, hopeless, very miserable. Indeed, it does not seem possible that, in any the
favorablest outward circumstances, Johnson’s life could have
been other than a painful one. The world might have had
more of profitable work out of him, or less; but his effort
against the world’s work could never have been a light one.
Nature, in return for his nobleness, had said to him, Live in
an element of diseased sorrow. Nay, perhaps the sorrow and
the nobleness were intimately and even inseparably connected
not live on unrealities,—clouds, froth and all inanity gave
way under them: there was no footing for them but on firm
earth; no rest or regular motion for them, if they got not
footing there. To a certain extent, they were Sons of Nature
once more in an age of Artifice; once more, Original Men.
As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by
nature, one of our great English souls. A strong and noble
man; so much left undeveloped in him to the last: in a kindlier element what might he not have been,—Poet, Priest, sovereign Ruler! On the whole, a man must not complain of his
“element,” of his “time,” or the like; it is thriftless work doing so. His time is bad: well then, he is there to make it bet-
with each other. At all events, poor Johnson had to go about
girt with continual hypochondria, physical and spiritual pain.
Like a Hercules with the burning Nessus’-shirt on him, which
shoots in on him dull incurable misery: the Nessus’-shirt not
to be stript off, which is his own natural skin! In this manner
he had to live. Figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases,
with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts;
stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he could come at: school-languages
and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing
better! The largest soul that was in all England; and provision
made for it of “fourpence-halfpenny a day.” Yet a giant invin-
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cible soul; a true man’s. One remembers always that story of
the shoes at Oxford: the rough, seamy-faced, rawboned College Servitor stalking about, in winter-season, with his shoes
worn out; how the charitable Gentleman Commoner secretly
places a new pair at his door; and the rawboned Servitor, lifting them, looking at them near, with his dim eyes, with what
thoughts,—pitches them out of window! Wet feet, mud, frost,
hunger or what you will; but not beggary: we cannot stand
beggary! Rude stubborn self-help here; a whole world of squa-
small mean souls are otherwise. I could not find a better proof
of what I said the other day, That the sincere man was by
nature the obedient man; that only in a World of Heroes was
there loyal Obedience to the Heroic. The essence of originality is not that it be new: Johnson believed altogether in the
old; he found the old opinions credible for him, fit for him;
and in a right heroic manner lived under them. He is well
worth study in regard to that. For we are to say that Johnson
was far other than a mere man of words and formulas; he was
lor, rudeness, confused misery and want, yet of nobleness and
manfulness withal. It is a type of the man’s life, this pitching
away of the shoes. An original man;—not a second-hand,
borrowing or begging man. Let us stand on our own basis, at
any rate! On such shoes as we ourselves can get. On frost and
mud, if you will, but honestly on that;—on the reality and
substance which Nature gives us, not on the semblance, on
the thing she has given another than us!—
And yet with all this rugged pride of manhood and selfhelp, was there ever soul more tenderly affectionate, loyally
submissive to what was really higher than he? Great souls are
always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them; only
a man of truths and facts. He stood by the old formulas; the
happier was it for him that he could so stand: but in all formulas that he could stand by, there needed to be a most genuine substance. Very curious how, in that poor Paper-age, so
barren, artificial, thick-quilted with Pedantries, Hearsays, the
great Fact of this Universe glared in, forever wonderful, indubitable, unspeakable, divine-infernal, upon this man too! How
he harmonized his Formulas with it, how he managed at all
under such circumstances: that is a thing worth seeing. A thing
“to be looked at with reverence, with pity, with awe.” That
Church of St. Clement Danes, where Johnson still worshipped
in the era of Voltaire, is to me a venerable place.
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It was in virtue of his sincerity, of his speaking still in some
sort from the heart of Nature, though in the current artificial
dialect, that Johnson was a Prophet. Are not all dialects “artificial”? Artificial things are not all false;—nay every true Product of Nature will infallibly shape itself; we may say all artificial things are, at the starting of them, true. What we call
“Formulas” are not in their origin bad; they are indispensably
good. Formula is method, habitude; found wherever man is
found. Formulas fashion themselves as Paths do, as beaten
ever widening itself as more travel it;—till at last there is a
broad Highway whereon the whole world may travel and
drive. While there remains a City or Shrine, or any Reality to
drive to, at the farther end, the Highway shall be right welcome! When the City is gone, we will forsake the Highway.
In this manner all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things in
the world have come into existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas all begin by being full of substance; you may
call them the skin, the articulation into shape, into limbs and
Highways, leading toward some sacred or high object, whither
many men are bent. Consider it. One man, full of heartfelt
earnest impulse, finds out a way of doing somewhat,—were
it of uttering his soul’s reverence for the Highest, were it but
of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An inventor was needed to
do that, a poet; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought
that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his way of
doing that; these are his footsteps, the beginning of a “Path.”
And now see: the second men travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, it is the easiest method. In the footsteps
of his foregoer; yet with improvements, with changes where
such seem good; at all events with enlargements, the Path
skin, of a substance that is already there: they had not been
there otherwise. Idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they
become doubtful, empty for the worshipper’s heart. Much as
we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant
withal of the high significance of true Formulas; that they
were, and will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our
habitation in this world.—
Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his “sincerity.” He
has no suspicion of his being particularly sincere,—of his being particularly anything! A hard-struggling, weary-hearted
man, or “scholar” as he calls himself, trying hard to get some
honest livelihood in the world, not to starve, but to live—
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without stealing! A noble unconsciousness is in him. He does
not “engrave Truth on his watch-seal;” no, but he stands by
truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it. Thus it ever is. Think
of it once more. The man whom Nature has appointed to do
great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to
Nature which renders him incapable of being insincere! To
his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact: all hearsay
is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of Life,
let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to
Johnson’s way of thinking about this world is not mine, any
more than Mahomet’s was: but I recognize the everlasting
element of heart-sincerity in both; and see with pleasure how
neither of them remains ineffectual. Neither of them is as
chaff sown; in both of them is something which the seedfield
will grow.
Johnson was a Prophet to his people; preached a Gospel to
them,—as all like him always do. The highest Gospel he
preached we may describe as a kind of Moral Prudence: “in a
forget it or deny it, is ever present to him,—fearful and wonderful, on this hand and on that. He has a basis of sincerity;
unrecognized, because never questioned or capable of question. Mirabeau, Mahomet, Cromwell, Napoleon: all the Great
Men I ever heard of have this as the primary material of them.
Innumerable commonplace men are debating, are talking everywhere their commonplace doctrines, which they have
learned by logic, by rote, at second-hand: to that kind of man
all this is still nothing. He must have truth; truth which he
feels to be true. How shall he stand otherwise? His whole
soul, at all moments, in all ways, tells him that there is no
standing. He is under the noble necessity of being true.
world where much is to be done, and little is to be known,”
see how you will do it! A thing well worth preaching. “A world
where much is to be done, and little is to be known:” do not
sink yourselves in boundless bottomless abysses of Doubt, of
wretched god-forgetting Unbelief;—you were miserable then,
powerless, mad: how could you do or work at all? Such Gospel Johnson preached and taught;—coupled, theoretically and
practically, with this other great Gospel, “Clear your mind of
Cant!” Have no trade with Cant: stand on the cold mud in
the frosty weather, but let it be in your own real torn shoes:
“that will be better for you,” as Mahomet says! I call this, I
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est perhaps that was possible at that time.
Johnson’s Writings, which once had such currency and celebrity, are now as it were disowned by the young generation.
It is not wonderful; Johnson’s opinions are fast becoming
obsolete: but his style of thinking and of living, we may hope,
will never become obsolete. I find in Johnson’s Books the
indisputablest traces of a great intellect and great heart;—ever
welcome, under what obstructions and perversions soever.
They are sincere words, those of his; he means things by them.
Dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it
stands there like a great solid square-built edifice, finished,
symmetrically complete: you judge that a true Builder did it.
One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted to poor
Bozzy. He passes for a mean, inflated, gluttonous creature;
and was so in many senses. Yet the fact of his reverence for
Johnson will ever remain noteworthy. The foolish conceited
Scotch Laird, the most conceited man of his time, approaching in such awe-struck attitude the great dusty irascible Peda-
A wondrous buckram style,—the best he could get to then; a
measured grandiloquence, stepping or rather stalking along
in a very solemn way, grown obsolete now; sometimes a tumid size of phraseology not in proportion to the contents of
it: all this you will put up with. For the phraseology, tumid
or not, has always something within it. So many beautiful
styles and books, with nothing in them;—a man is a malefactor to the world who writes such! They are the avoidable
kind!—Had Johnson left nothing but his Dictionary, one
might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine man. Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity, honesty,
insight and successful method, it may be called the best of all
gogue in his mean garret there: it is a genuine reverence for
Excellence; a worship for Heroes, at a time when neither Heroes nor worship were surmised to exist. Heroes, it would
seem, exist always, and a certain worship of them! We will
also take the liberty to deny altogether that of the witty Frenchman, that no man is a Hero to his valet-de-chambre. Or if so,
it is not the Hero’s blame, but the Valet’s: that his soul, namely,
is a mean valet-soul! He expects his Hero to advance in royal
stage-trappings, with measured step, trains borne behind him,
trumpets sounding before him. It should stand rather, No
man can be a Grand-Monarque to his valet-de-chambre. Strip
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ing but a poor forked radish with a head fantastically carved;—
admirable to no valet. The Valet does not know a Hero when
he sees him! Alas, no: it requires a kind of Hero to do that;—
and one of the world’s wants, in this as in other senses, is for
most part want of such.
On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell’s admiration
was well bestowed; that he could have found no soul in all
England so worthy of bending down before? Shall we not
say, of this great mournful Johnson too, that he guided his
difficult confused existence wisely; led it well, like a right valiant man? That waste chaos of Authorship by trade; that waste
chaos of Scepticism in religion and politics, in life-theory and
life-practice; in his poverty, in his dust and dimness, with the
sick body and the rusty coat: he made it do for him, like a
brave man. Not wholly without a loadstar in the Eternal; he
had still a loadstar, as the brave all need to have: with his eye
set on that, he would change his course for nothing in these
confused vortices of the lower sea of Time. “To the Spirit of
Lies, bearing death and hunger, he would in nowise strike his
flag.” Brave old Samuel: ultimus Romanorum!
OF ROUSSEAU AND HIS HEROISM I cannot say so much. He is
not what I call a strong man. A morbid, excitable, spasmodic
man; at best, intense rather than strong. He had not “the talent of Silence,” an invaluable talent; which few Frenchmen,
or indeed men of any sort in these times, excel in! The suffering man ought really “to consume his own smoke;” there is
no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire,—
which, in the metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable of
becoming! Rousseau has not depth or width, not calm force
for difficulty; the first characteristic of true greatness. A fundamental mistake to call vehemence and rigidity strength! A
man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though six men
cannot hold him then. He that can walk under the heaviest
weight without staggering, he is the strong man. We need
forever, especially in these loud-shrieking days, to remind
ourselves of that. A man who cannot hold his peace, till the
time come for speaking and acting, is no right man.
Poor Rousseau’s face is to me expressive of him. A high but
narrow contracted intensity in it: bony brows; deep, strait-set
eyes, in which there is something bewildered-looking,—bewildered, peering with lynx-eagerness. A face full of misery,
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even ignoble misery, and also of the antagonism against that;
something mean, plebeian there, redeemed only by intensity:
the face of what is called a Fanatic,—a sadly contracted Hero!
We name him here because, with all his drawbacks, and they
are many, he has the first and chief characteristic of a Hero: he
is heartily in earnest. In earnest, if ever man was; as none of
these French Philosophers were. Nay, one would say, of an
earnestness too great for his otherwise sensitive, rather feeble
nature; and which indeed in the end drove him into the strang-
happen nevertheless to be drawn aside: the Pit recognized Jean
Jacques, but took no great notice of him! He expressed the
bitterest indignation; gloomed all evening, spake no other than
surly words. The glib Countess remained entirely convinced
that his anger was not at being seen, but at not being applauded when seen. How the whole nature of the man is poisoned; nothing but suspicion, self-isolation, fierce moody
ways! He could not live with anybody. A man of some rank
from the country, who visited him often, and used to sit with
est incoherences, almost delirations. There had come, at last,
to be a kind of madness in him: his Ideas possessed him like
demons; hurried him so about, drove him over steep places!—
The fault and misery of Rousseau was what we easily name
by a single word, Egoism; which is indeed the source and summary of all faults and miseries whatsoever. He had not perfected himself into victory over mere Desire; a mean Hunger,
in many sorts, was still the motive principle of him. I am
afraid he was a very vain man; hungry for the praises of men.
You remember Genlis’s experience of him. She took Jean
Jacques to the Theatre; he bargaining for a strict incognito,—
”He would not be seen there for the world!” The curtain did
him, expressing all reverence and affection for him, comes
one day; finds Jean Jacques full of the sourest unintelligible
humor. “Monsieur,” said Jean Jacques, with flaming eyes, “I
know why you come here. You come to see what a poor life I
lead; how little is in my poor pot that is boiling there. Well,
look into the pot! There is half a pound of meat, one carrot
and three onions; that is all: go and tell the whole world that,
if you like, Monsieur!”—A man of this sort was far gone.
The whole world got itself supplied with anecdotes, for light
laughter, for a certain theatrical interest, from these perversions and contortions of poor Jean Jacques. Alas, to him they
were not laughing or theatrical; too real to him! The contor157
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tions of a dying gladiator: the crowded amphitheatre looks
on with entertainment; but the gladiator is in agonies and
dying.
And yet this Rousseau, as we say, with his passionate appeals to Mothers, with his contrat-social, with his celebrations
of Nature, even of savage life in Nature, did once more touch
upon Reality, struggle towards Reality; was doing the function of a Prophet to his Time. As he could, and as the Time
could! Strangely through all that defacement, degradation and
fro of a man sent on an errand he is too weak for, by a path he
cannot yet find? Men are led by strange ways. One should
have tolerance for a man, hope of him; leave him to try yet
what he will do. While life lasts, hope lasts for every man.
Of Rousseau’s literary talents, greatly celebrated still among
his countrymen, I do not say much. His Books, like himself,
are what I call unhealthy; not the good sort of Books. There
is a sensuality in Rousseau. Combined with such an intellectual gift as his, it makes pictures of a certain gorgeous attrac-
almost madness, there is in the inmost heart of poor Rousseau
a spark of real heavenly fire. Once more, out of the element
of that withered mocking Philosophism, Scepticism and Persiflage, there has arisen in this man the ineradicable feeling
and knowledge that this Life of ours is true: not a Scepticism,
Theorem, or Persiflage, but a Fact, an awful Reality. Nature
had made that revelation to him; had ordered him to speak it
out. He got it spoken out; if not well and clearly, then ill and
dimly,—as clearly as he could. Nay what are all errors and
perversities of his, even those stealings of ribbons, aimless
confused miseries and vagabondisms, if we will interpret them
kindly, but the blinkard dazzlement and staggerings to and
tiveness: but they are not genuinely poetical. Not white sunlight: something operatic; a kind of rose-pink, artificial bedizenment. It is frequent, or rather it is universal, among the
French since his time. Madame de Stael has something of it;
St. Pierre; and down onwards to the present astonishing convulsionary “Literature of Desperation,” it is everywhere abundant. That same rose-pink is not the right hue. Look at a
Shakspeare, at a Goethe, even at a Walter Scott! He who has
once seen into this, has seen the difference of the True from
the Sham-True, and will discriminate them ever afterwards.
We had to observe in Johnson how much good a Prophet,
under all disadvantages and disorganizations, can accomplish
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for the world. In Rousseau we are called to look rather at the
fearful amount of evil which, under such disorganization, may
accompany the good. Historically it is a most pregnant spectacle, that of Rousseau. Banished into Paris garrets, in the
gloomy company of his own Thoughts and Necessities there;
driven from post to pillar; fretted, exasperated till the heart of
him went mad, he had grown to feel deeply that the world
was not his friend nor the world’s law. It was expedient, if any
way possible, that such a man should not have been set in flat
hostility with the world. He could be cooped into garrets,
laughed at as a maniac, left to starve like a wild beast in his
cage;—but he could not be hindered from setting the world
on fire. The French Revolution found its Evangelist in
Rousseau. His semi-delirious speculations on the miseries of
civilized life, the preferability of the savage to the civilized,
and such like, helped well to produce a whole delirium in
France generally. True, you may well ask, What could the
world, the governors of the world, do with such a man? Difficult to say what the governors of the world could do with
him! What he could do with them is unhappily clear
enough,—guillotine a great many of them! Enough now of
Rousseau. IT WAS A CURIOUS PHENOMENON, in the withered,
unbelieving second-hand Eighteenth Century, that of a Hero
starting up, among the artificial pasteboard figures and productions, in the guise of a Robert Burns. Like a little well in
the rocky desert places,—like a sudden splendor of Heaven in
the artificial Vauxhall! People knew not what to make of it.
They took it for a piece of the Vauxhall fire-work; alas, it let
itself be so taken, though struggling half-blindly, as in bitterness of death, against that! Perhaps no man had such a false
reception from his fellow-men. Once more a very wasteful
life-drama was enacted under the sun.
The tragedy of Burns’s life is known to all of you. Surely
we may say, if discrepancy between place held and place merited constitute perverseness of lot for a man, no lot could be
more perverse then Burns’s. Among those second-hand actingfigures, mimes for most part, of the Eighteenth Century, once
more a giant Original Man; one of those men who reach down
to the perennial Deeps, who take rank with the Heroic among
men: and he was born in a poor Ayrshire hut. The largest soul
of all the British lands came among us in the shape of a hardhanded Scottish Peasant.
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His Father, a poor toiling man, tried various things; did not
succeed in any; was involved in continual difficulties. The
Steward, Factor as the Scotch call him, used to send letters
and threatenings, Burns says, “which threw us all into tears.”
The brave, hard-toiling, hard-suffering Father, his brave heroine of a wife; and those children, of whom Robert was one!
In this Earth, so wide otherwise, no shelter for them. The
letters “threw us all into tears:” figure it. The brave Father, I
say always;—a silent Hero and Poet; without whom the son
lost. Robert is there the outcome of him,—and indeed of
many generations of such as him.
This Burns appeared under every disadvantage: uninstructed,
poor, born only to hard manual toil; and writing, when it
came to that, in a rustic special dialect, known only to a small
province of the country he lived in. Had he written, even
what he did write, in the general language of England, I doubt
not he had already become universally recognized as being, or
capable to be, one of our greatest men. That he should have
had never been a speaking one! Burns’s Schoolmaster came
afterwards to London, learnt what good society was; but declares that in no meeting of men did he ever enjoy better
discourse than at the hearth of this peasant. And his poor
“seven acres of nursery-ground,”—not that, nor the miserable patch of clay-farm, nor anything he tried to get a living
by, would prosper with him; he had a sore unequal battle all
his days. But he stood to it valiantly; a wise, faithful, unconquerable man;—swallowing down how many sore sufferings
daily into silence; fighting like an unseen Hero,—nobody
publishing newspaper paragraphs about his nobleness; voting
pieces of plate to him! However, he was not lost; nothing is
tempted so many to penetrate through the rough husk of
that dialect of his, is proof that there lay something far from
common within it. He has gained a certain recognition, and
is continuing to do so over all quarters of our wide Saxon
world: wheresoever a Saxon dialect is spoken, it begins to be
understood, by personal inspection of this and the other, that
one of the most considerable Saxon men of the Eighteenth
Century was an Ayrshire Peasant named Robert Burns. Yes, I
will say, here too was a piece of the right Saxon stuff: strong
as the Harz-rock, rooted in the depths of the world;—rock,
yet with wells of living softness in it! A wild impetuous whirlwind of passion and faculty slumbered quiet there; such heav160
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enly melody dwelling in the heart of it. A noble rough genuineness; homely, rustic, honest; true simplicity of strength;
with its lightning-fire, with its soft dewy pity;—like the old
Norse Thor, the Peasant-god!
Burns’s Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and worth,
has told me that Robert, in his young days, in spite of their
hardship, was usually the gayest of speech; a fellow of infinite
frolic, laughter, sense and heart; far pleasanter to hear there,
stript cutting peats in the bog, or such like, than he ever after-
You would think it strange if I called Burns the most gifted
British soul we had in all that century of his: and yet I believe
the day is coming when there will be little danger in saying
so. His writings, all that he did under such obstructions, are
only a poor fragment of him. Professor Stewart remarked
very justly, what indeed is true of all Poets good for much,
that his poetry was not any particular faculty; but the general
result of a naturally vigorous original mind expressing itself
in that way. Burns’s gifts, expressed in conversation, are the
wards knew him. I can well believe it. This basis of mirth
(“fond gaillard,” as old Marquis Mirabeau calls it), a primal
element of sunshine and joyfulness, coupled with his other
deep and earnest qualities, is one of the most attractive characteristics of Burns. A large fund of Hope dwells in him; spite
of his tragical history, he is not a mourning man. He shakes
his sorrows gallantly aside; bounds forth victorious over them.
It is as the lion shaking “dew-drops from his mane;” as the
swift-bounding horse, that laughs at the shaking of the spear.—
But indeed, Hope, Mirth, of the sort like Burns’s, are they
not the outcome properly of warm generous affection,—such
as is the beginning of all to every man?
theme of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts: from the
gracefulest utterances of courtesy, to the highest fire of passionate speech; loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight; all was in him.
Witty duchesses celebrate him as a man whose speech “led
them off their feet.” This is beautiful: but still more beautiful
that which Mr. Lockhart has recorded, which I have more
than once alluded to, How the waiters and ostlers at inns
would get out of bed, and come crowding to hear this man
speak! Waiters and ostlers:—they too were men, and here was
a man! I have heard much about his speech; but one of the
best things I ever heard of it was, last year, from a venerable
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gentleman long familiar with him. That it was speech distinguished by always having something in it. “He spoke rather little
than much,” this old man told me; “sat rather silent in those
early days, as in the company of persons above him; and always
when he did speak, it was to throw new light on the matter.” I
know not why any one should ever speak otherwise!—But if
we look at his general force of soul, his healthy robustness every
way, the rugged downrightness, penetration, generous valor and
manfulness that was in him,—where shall we readily find a
both these men speak. The same raging passions; capable too
in both of manifesting themselves as the tenderest noble affections. Wit; wild laughter, energy, directness, sincerity: these
were in both. The types of the two men are not dissimilar.
Burns too could have governed, debated in National Assemblies; politicized, as few could. Alas, the courage which had
to exhibit itself in capture of smuggling schooners in the
Solway Frith; in keeping silence over so much, where no good
speech, but only inarticulate rage was possible: this might have
better-gifted man?
Among the great men of the Eighteenth Century, I sometimes feel as if Burns might be found to resemble Mirabeau
more than any other. They differ widely in vesture; yet look
at them intrinsically. There is the same burly thick-necked
strength of body as of soul;—built, in both cases, on what
the old Marquis calls a fond gaillard. By nature, by course of
breeding, indeed by nation, Mirabeau has much more of bluster; a noisy, forward, unresting man. But the characteristic of
Mirabeau too is veracity and sense, power of true insight, superiority of vision. The thing that he says is worth remembering. It is a flash of insight into some object or other: so do
bellowed forth Ushers de Breze and the like; and made itself
visible to all men, in managing of kingdoms, in ruling of
great ever-memorable epochs! But they said to him reprovingly, his Official Superiors said, and wrote: “You are to work,
not think.” Of your thinking-faculty, the greatest in this land,
we have no need; you are to gauge beer there; for that only
are you wanted. Very notable;—and worth mentioning,
though we know what is to be said and answered! As if
Thought, Power of Thinking, were not, at all times, in all
places and situations of the world, precisely the thing that
was wanted. The fatal man, is he not always the unthinking
man, the man who cannot think and see; but only grope, and
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hallucinate, and missee the nature of the thing he works with?
He mis-sees it, mistakes it as we say; takes it for one thing,
and it is another thing,—and leaves him standing like a Futility there! He is the fatal man; unutterably fatal, put in the
high places of men.—”Why complain of this?” say some:
“Strength is mournfully denied its arena; that was true from
of old.” Doubtless; and the worse for the arena, answer I!
Complaining profits little; stating of the truth may profit.
That a Europe, with its French Revolution just breaking out,
too were not without a kind of Hero-worship: but what a
strange condition has that got into now! The waiters and ostlers
of Scotch inns, prying about the door, eager to catch any word
that fell from Burns, were doing unconscious reverence to
the Heroic. Johnson had his Boswell for worshipper. Rousseau
had worshippers enough; princes calling on him in his mean
garret; the great, the beautiful doing reverence to the poor
moon-struck man. For himself a most portentous contradiction; the two ends of his life not to be brought into harmony.
finds no need of a Burns except for gauging beer,—is a thing
I, for one, cannot rejoice at!—
Once more we have to say here, that the chief quality of
Burns is the sincerity of him. So in his Poetry, so in his Life.
The song he sings is not of fantasticalities; it is of a thing felt,
really there; the prime merit of this, as of all in him, and of
his Life generally, is truth. The Life of Burns is what we may
call a great tragic sincerity. A sort of savage sincerity,—not
cruel, far from that; but wild, wrestling naked with the truth
of things. In that sense, there is something of the savage in all
great men.
Hero-worship,—Odin, Burns? Well; these Men of Letters
He sits at the tables of grandees; and has to copy music for his
own living. He cannot even get his music copied: “By dint of
dining out,” says he, “I run the risk of dying by starvation at
home.” For his worshippers too a most questionable thing! If
doing Hero-worship well or badly be the test of vital wellbeing or ill-being to a generation, can we say that these generations are very first-rate?—And yet our heroic Men of Letters do teach, govern, are kings, priests, or what you like to
call them; intrinsically there is no preventing it by any means
whatever. The world has to obey him who thinks and sees in
the world. The world can alter the manner of that; can either
have it as blessed continuous summer sunshine, or as unblessed
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black thunder and tornado,—with unspeakable difference of
profit for the world! The manner of it is very alterable; the
matter and fact of it is not alterable by any power under the
sky. Light; or, failing that, lightning: the world can take its
choice. Not whether we call an Odin god, prophet, priest, or
what we call him; but whether we believe the word he tells
us: there it all lies. If it be a true word, we shall have to believe
it; believing it, we shall have to do it. What name or welcome
we give him or it, is a point that concerns ourselves mainly.
twenty-seventh year, is no longer even a ploughman; he is
flying to the West Indies to escape disgrace and a jail. This
month he is a ruined peasant, his wages seven pounds a year,
and these gone from him: next month he is in the blaze of
rank and beauty, handing down jewelled Duchesses to dinner; the cynosure of all eyes! Adversity is sometimes hard upon
a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a
hundred that will stand adversity. I admire much the way in
which Burns met all this. Perhaps no man one could point
It, the new Truth, new deeper revealing of the Secret of this
Universe, is verily of the nature of a message from on high;
and must and will have itself obeyed.—
My last remark is on that notablest phasis of Burns’s history,—his visit to Edinburgh. Often it seems to me as if his
demeanor there were the highest proof he gave of what a fund
of worth and genuine manhood was in him. If we think of it,
few heavier burdens could be laid on the strength of a man.
So sudden; all common Lionism. which ruins innumerable
men, was as nothing to this. It is as if Napoleon had been
made a King of, not gradually, but at once from the Artillery
Lieutenancy in the Regiment La Fere. Burns, still only in his
out, was ever so sorely tried, and so little forgot himself. Tranquil, unastonished; not abashed, not inflated, neither awkwardness nor affectation: he feels that he there is the man
Robert Burns; that the “rank is but the guinea-stamp;” that
the celebrity is but the candle-light, which will show what
man, not in the least make him a better or other man! Alas, it
may readily, unless he look to it, make him a worse man; a
wretched inflated wind-bag,—inflated till he burst, and become a dead lion; for whom, as some one has said, “there is
no resurrection of the body;” worse than a living dog!—Burns
is admirable here.
And yet, alas, as I have observed elsewhere, these Lion-hunt164
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ers were the ruin and death of Burns. It was they that rendered it impossible for him to live! They gathered round him
in his Farm; hindered his industry; no place was remote enough
from them. He could not get his Lionism forgotten, honestly as he was disposed to do so. He falls into discontents,
into miseries, faults; the world getting ever more desolate for
him; health, character, peace of mind, all gone;—solitary
enough now. It is tragical to think of! These men came but to
see him; it was out of no sympathy with him, nor no hatred
to him. They came to get a little amusement; they got their
amusement;—and the Hero’s life went for it!
Richter says, in the Island of Sumatra there is a kind of
“Light-chafers,” large Fire-flies, which people stick upon spits,
and illuminate the ways with at night. Persons of condition
can thus travel with a pleasant radiance, which they much
admire. Great honor to the Fire-flies! But—!
[May 22, 1840.]
LECTURE VI.
THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON: MODERN REVOLUTIONISM.
W
to the last form of Heroism; that
which we call Kingship. The Commander over
Men; he to whose will our wills are to be subordinated, and loyally surrender themselves, and find their
welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the most important of
Great Men. He is practically the summary for us of all the
various figures of Heroism; Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of
earthly or of spiritual dignity we can fancy to reside in a man,
embodies itself here, to command over us, to furnish us with
constant practical teaching, to tell us for the day and hour
what we are to do. He is called Rex, Regulator, Roi: our own
name is still better; King, Konning, which means Can-ning,
Able-man.
Numerous considerations, pointing towards deep, questionE COME NOW
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able, and indeed unfathomable regions, present themselves
here: on the most of which we must resolutely for the present
forbear to speak at all. As Burke said that perhaps fair Trial by
Jury was the soul of Government, and that all legislation, administration, parliamentary debating, and the rest of it, went
on, in “order to bring twelve impartial men into a jury-box;”—
so, by much stronger reason, may I say here, that the finding
of your Ableman and getting him invested with the symbols of
ability, with dignity, worship (worth-ship), royalty, kinghood,
us to do must be precisely the wisest, fittest, that we could
anywhere or anyhow learn;—the thing which it will in all
ways behoove US, with right loyal thankfulness and nothing
doubting, to do! Our doing and life were then, so far as government could regulate it, well regulated; that were the ideal
of constitutions.
Alas, we know very well that Ideals can never be completely
embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a very great way
off; and we will right thankfully content ourselves with any
or whatever we call it, so that he may actually have room to
guide according to his faculty of doing it,—is the business,
well or ill accomplished, of all social procedure whatsoever in
this world! Hustings-speeches, Parliamentary motions, Reform Bills, French Revolutions, all mean at heart this; or else
nothing. Find in any country the Ablest Man that exists there;
raise him to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him:
you have a perfect government for that country; no ballotbox, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution-building,
or other machinery whatsoever can improve it a whit. It is in
the perfect state; an ideal country. The Ablest Man; he means
also the truest-hearted, justest, the Noblest Man: what he tells
not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller
says, too querulously “measure by a scale of perfection the
meagre product of reality” in this poor world of ours. We will
esteem him no wise man; we will esteem him a sickly, discontented, foolish man. And yet, on the other hand, it is never
to be forgotten that Ideals do exist; that if they be not approximated to at all, the whole matter goes to wreck! Infallibly. No bricklayer builds a wall perfectly perpendicular, mathematically this is not possible; a certain degree of perpendicularity suffices him; and he, like a good bricklayer, who must
have done with his job, leaves it so. And yet if he sway too
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met and level quite away from him, and pile brick on brick
heedless, just as it comes to hand—! Such bricklayer, I think,
is in a bad way. He has forgotten himself: but the Law of
Gravitation does not forget to act on him; he and his wall
rush down into confused welter of ruin!—
This is the history of all rebellions, French Revolutions,
social explosions in ancient or modern times. You have put
the too Unable Man at the head of affairs! The too ignoble,
unvaliant, fatuous man. You have forgotten that there is any
Much sorry stuff, written some hundred years ago or more,
about the “Divine right of Kings,” moulders unread now in
the Public Libraries of this country. Far be it from us to disturb the calm process by which it is disappearing harmlessly
from the earth, in those repositories! At the same time, not to
let the immense rubbish go without leaving us, as it ought,
some soul of it behind—I will say that it did mean something; something true, which it is important for us and all
men to keep in mind. To assert that in whatever man you
rule, or natural necessity whatever, of putting the Able Man
there. Brick must lie on brick as it may and can. Unable
Simulacrum of Ability, quack, in a word, must adjust himself
with quack, in all manner of administration of human
things;—which accordingly lie unadministered, fermenting
into unmeasured masses of failure, of indigent misery: in the
outward, and in the inward or spiritual, miserable millions
stretch out the hand for their due supply, and it is not there.
The “law of gravitation” acts; Nature’s laws do none of them
forget to act. The miserable millions burst forth into
Sansculottism, or some other sort of madness: bricks and
bricklayer lie as a fatal chaos!—
chose to lay hold of (by this or the other plan of clutching at
him); and claps a round piece of metal on the head of, and
called King,—there straightway came to reside a divine virtue, so that he became a kind of god, and a Divinity inspired
him with faculty and right to rule over you to all lengths:
this,—what can we do with this but leave it to rot silently in
the Public Libraries? But I will say withal, and that is what
these Divine-right men meant, That in Kings, and in all human Authorities, and relations that men god-created can form
among each other, there is verily either a Divine Right or else
a Diabolic Wrong; one or the other of these two! For it is
false altogether, what the last Sceptical Century taught us,
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that this world is a steam-engine. There is a God in this world;
and a God’s-sanction, or else the violation of such, does look
out from all ruling and obedience, from all moral acts of
men. There is no act more moral between men than that of
rule and obedience. Woe to him that claims obedience when
it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is! God’s law
is in that, I say, however the Parchment-laws may run: there is
a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong at the heart of every
claim that one man makes upon another.
these ages, seeking after! The true King, as guide of the practical, has ever something of the Pontiff in him,—guide of the
spiritual, from which all practice has its rise. This too is a true
saying, That the King is head of the Church.—But we will
leave the Polemic stuff of a dead century to lie quiet on its
bookshelves.
Certainly it is a fearful business, that of having your Ableman
to seek, and not knowing in what manner to proceed about
it! That is the world’s sad predicament in these times of ours.
It can do none of us harm to reflect on this: in all the relations of life it will concern us; in Loyalty and Royalty, the
highest of these. I esteem the modern error, That all goes by
self-interest and the checking and balancing of greedy knaveries, and that in short, there is nothing divine whatever in the
association of men, a still more despicable error, natural as it
is to an unbelieving century, than that of a “divine right” in
people called Kings. I say, Find me the true Konning, King, or
Able-man, and he has a divine right over me. That we knew
in some tolerable measure how to find him, and that all men
were ready to acknowledge his divine right when found: this
is precisely the healing which a sick world is everywhere, in
They are times of revolution, and have long been. The bricklayer with his bricks, no longer heedful of plummet or the
law of gravitation, have toppled, tumbled, and it all welters
as we see! But the beginning of it was not the French Revolution; that is rather the end, we can hope. It were truer to say,
the beginning was three centuries farther back: in the Reformation of Luther. That the thing which still called itself Christian Church had become a Falsehood, and brazenly went about
pretending to pardon men’s sins for metallic coined money,
and to do much else which in the everlasting truth of Nature
it did not now do: here lay the vital malady. The inward being
wrong, all outward went ever more and more wrong. Belief
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died away; all was Doubt, Disbelief. The builder cast _away_
his plummet; said to himself, “What is gravitation? Brick lies
on brick there!” Alas, does it not still sound strange to many
of us, the assertion that there is a God’s-truth in the business
of god-created men; that all is not a kind of grimace, an “expediency,” diplomacy, one knows not what!—
From that first necessary assertion of Luther’s, “You, selfstyled Papa, you are no Father in God at all; you are—a Chimera, whom I know not how to name in polite language!”—
we have to return to truth. Here is a Truth, as I said: a Truth
clad in hell-fire, since they would not but have it so!—
A common theory among considerable parties of men in
England and elsewhere used to be, that the French Nation
had, in those days, as it were gone mad; that the French Revolution was a general act of insanity, a temporary conversion of
France and large sections of the world into a kind of Bedlam.
The Event had risen and raged; but was a madness and nonentity,—gone now happily into the region of Dreams and the
from that onwards to the shout which rose round Camille
Desmoulins in the Palais-Royal, “Aux armes!” when the people
had burst up against all manner of Chimeras,—I find a natural historical sequence. That shout too, so frightful, half-infernal, was a great matter. Once more the voice of awakened
nations;—starting confusedly, as out of nightmare, as out of
death-sleep, into some dim feeling that Life was real; that
God’s-world was not an expediency and diplomacy! Infernal;—yes, since they would not have it otherwise. Infernal,
since not celestial or terrestrial! Hollowness, insincerity has to
cease; sincerity of some sort has to begin. Cost what it may,
reigns of terror, horrors of French Revolution or what else,
Picturesque!—To such comfortable philosophers, the Three
Days of July, 183O, must have been a surprising phenomenon. Here is the French Nation risen again, in musketry and
death-struggle, out shooting and being shot, to make that
same mad French Revolution good! The sons and grandsons
of those men, it would seem, persist in the enterprise: they do
not disown it; they will have it made good; will have themselves shot, if it be not made good. To philosophers who had
made up their life-system, on that “madness” quietus, no phenomenon could be more alarming. Poor Niebuhr, they say,
the Prussian Professor and Historian, fell broken-hearted in
consequence; sickened, if we can believe it, and died of the
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Three Days! It was surely not a very heroic death;—little better than Racine’s, dying because Louis Fourteenth looked
sternly on him once. The world had stood some considerable
shocks, in its time; might have been expected to survive the
Three Days too, and be found turning on its axis after even
them! The Three Days told all mortals that the old French
Revolution, mad as it might look, was not a transitory ebullition of Bedlam, but a genuine product of this Earth where
we all live; that it was verily a Fact, and that the world in
They are the wisest who will learn it soonest. Long confused
generations before it be learned; peace impossible till it be!
The earnest man, surrounded, as ever, with a world of inconsistencies, can await patiently, patiently strive to do his work,
in the midst of that. Sentence of Death is written down in
Heaven against all that; sentence of Death is now proclaimed
on the Earth against it: this he with his eyes may see. And
surely, I should say, considering the other side of the matter,
what enormous difficulties lie there, and how fast, fearfully
general would do well everywhere to regard it as such.
Truly, without the French Revolution, one would not know
what to make of an age like this at all. We will hail the French
Revolution, as shipwrecked mariners might the sternest rock,
in a world otherwise all of baseless sea and waves. A true Apocalypse, though a terrible one, to this false withered artificial
time; testifying once more that Nature is preternatural; if not
divine, then diabolic; that Semblance is not Reality; that it
has to become Reality, or the world will take fire under it,—
burn _it_ into what it is, namely Nothing! Plausibility has
ended; empty Routine has ended; much has ended. This, as
with a Trump of Doom, has been proclaimed to all men.
fast, in all countries, the inexorable demand for solution of
them is pressing on,—he may easily find other work to do
than laboring in the Sansculottic province at this time of day!
To me, in these circumstances, that of “Hero-worship” becomes a fact inexpressibly precious; the most solacing fact
one sees in the world at present. There is an everlasting hope
in it for the management of the world. Had all traditions,
arrangements, creeds, societies that men ever instituted, sunk
away, this would remain. The certainty of Heroes being sent
us; our faculty, our necessity, to reverence Heroes when sent:
it shines like a polestar through smoke-clouds, dust-clouds,
and all manner of down-rushing and conflagration.
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Hero-worship would have sounded very strange to those
workers and fighters in the French Revolution. Not reverence
for Great Men; not any hope or belief, or even wish, that
Great Men could again appear in the world! Nature, turned
into a “Machine,” was as if effete now; could not any longer
produce Great Men:—I can tell her, she may give up the trade
altogether, then; we cannot do without Great Men!—But
neither have I any quarrel with that of “Liberty and Equality;” with the faith that, wise great men being impossible, a
uct of entire sceptical blindness, as yet only struggling to see.
Hero-worship exists forever, and everywhere: not Loyalty
alone; it extends from divine adoration down to the lowest
practical regions of life. “Bending before men,” if it is not to
be a mere empty grimace, better dispensed with than practiced, is Hero-worship,—a recognition that there does dwell
in that presence of our brother something divine; that every
created man, as Novalis said, is a “revelation in the Flesh.”
They were Poets too, that devised all those graceful courtesies
level immensity of foolish small men would suffice. It was a
natural faith then and there. “Liberty and Equality; no Authority needed any longer. Hero-worship, reverence for such
Authorities, has proved false, is itself a falsehood; no more of
it! We have had such forgeries, we will now trust nothing. So
many base plated coins passing in the market, the belief has
now become common that no gold any longer exists,—and
even that we can do very well without gold!” I find this, among
other things, in that universal cry of Liberty and Equality;
and find it very natural, as matters then stood.
And yet surely it is but the transition from false to true.
Considered as the whole truth, it is false altogether;—the prod-
which make life noble! Courtesy is not a falsehood or grimace; it need not be such. And Loyalty, religious Worship
itself, are still possible; nay still inevitable.
May we not say, moreover, while so many of our late Heroes have worked rather as revolutionary men, that nevertheless every Great Man, every genuine man, is by the nature of
him a son of Order, not of Disorder? It is a tragical position
for a true man to work in revolutions. He seems an anarchist;
and indeed a painful element of anarchy does encumber him
at every step,—him to whose whole soul anarchy is hostile,
hateful. His mission is Order; every man’s is. He is here to
make what was disorderly, chaotic, into a thing ruled, regular.
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He is the missionary of Order. Is not all work of man in this
world a making of Order? The carpenter finds rough trees;
shapes them, constrains them into square fitness, into purpose and use. We are all born enemies of Disorder: it is tragical for us all to be concerned in image-breaking and downpulling; for the Great Man, more a man than we, it is doubly
tragical.
Thus too all human things, maddest French Sansculottisms,
do and must work towards Order. I say, there is not a man in
them, raging in the thickest of the madness, but is impelled
withal, at all moments, towards Order. His very life means
that; Disorder is dissolution, death. No chaos but it seeks a
centre to revolve round. While man is man, some Cromwell
or Napoleon is the necessary finish of a Sansculottism.—Curious: in those days when Hero-worship was the most incredible thing to every one, how it does come out nevertheless,
and assert itself practically, in a way which all have to credit.
Divine right, take it on the great scale, is found to mean divine might withal! While old false Formulas are getting
trampled everywhere into destruction, new genuine Substances
unexpectedly unfold themselves indestructible. In rebellious
ages, when Kingship itself seems dead and abolished,
Cromwell, Napoleon step forth again as Kings. The history
of these men is what we have now to look at, as our last
phasis of Heroism. The old ages are brought back to us; the
manner in which Kings were made, and Kingship itself first
took rise, is again exhibited in the history of these Two.
WE HAVE HAD MANY CIVIL WARS in England; wars of Red and
White Roses, wars of Simon de Montfort; wars enough, which
are not very memorable. But that war of the Puritans has a
significance which belongs to no one of the others. Trusting
to your candor, which will suggest on the other side what I
have not room to say, I will call it a section once more of that
great universal war which alone makes up the true History of
the World,—the war of Belief against Unbelief! The struggle
of men intent on the real essence of things, against men intent on the semblances and forms of things. The Puritans, to
many, seem mere savage Iconoclasts, fierce destroyers of Forms;
but it were more just to call them haters of untrue Forms. I
hope we know how to respect Laud and his King as well as
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starred, not dishonest an unfortunate Pedant rather than anything worse. His “Dreams” and superstitions, at which they
laugh so, have an affectionate, lovable kind of character. He is
like a College-Tutor, whose whole world is forms, Collegerules; whose notion is that these are the life and safety of the
world. He is placed suddenly, with that unalterable luckless
notion of his, at the head not of a College but of a Nation, to
regulate the most complex deep-reaching interests of men.
He thinks they ought to go by the old decent regulations; nay
ism is not the thing I praise in the Puritans; it is the thing I
pity,—praising only the spirit which had rendered that inevitable! All substances clothe themselves in forms: but there are
suitable true forms, and then there are untrue unsuitable. As
the briefest definition, one might say, Forms which grow round
a substance, if we rightly understand that, will correspond to
the real nature and purport of it, will be true, good; forms
which are consciously put round a substance, bad. I invite
you to reflect on this. It distinguishes true from false in Cer-
that their salvation will lie in extending and improving these.
Like a weak man, he drives with spasmodic vehemence towards his purpose; cramps himself to it, heeding no voice of
prudence, no cry of pity: He will have his College-rules obeyed
by his Collegians; that first; and till that, nothing. He is an
ill-starred Pedant, as I said. He would have it the world was a
College of that kind, and the world was not that. Alas, was
not his doom stern enough? Whatever wrongs he did, were
they not all frightfully avenged on him?
It is meritorious to insist on forms; Religion and all else
naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the formed world
is the only habitable one. The naked formlessness of Puritan-
emonial Form, earnest solemnity from empty pageant, in all
human things.
There must be a veracity, a natural spontaneity in forms. In
the commonest meeting of men, a person making, what we
call, “set speeches,” is not he an offence? In the mere drawingroom, whatsoever courtesies you see to be grimaces, prompted
by no spontaneous reality within, are a thing you wish to get
away from. But suppose now it were some matter of vital
concernment, some transcendent matter (as Divine Worship
is), about which your whole soul, struck dumb with its excess of feeling, knew not how to form itself into utterance at
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sible,—what should we say of a man coming forward to represent or utter it for you in the way of upholsterer-mummery? Such a man,—let him depart swiftly, if he love himself! You have lost your only son; are mute, struck down,
without even tears: an importunate man importunately offers to celebrate Funeral Games for him in the manner of the
Greeks! Such mummery is not only not to be accepted,—it
is hateful, unendurable. It is what the old Prophets called
“Idolatry,” worshipping of hollow shows; what all earnest men
ally the essence of all Churches whatsoever? The nakedest,
savagest reality, I say, is preferable to any semblance, however
dignified. Besides, it will clothe itself with due semblance by
and by, if it be real. No fear of that; actually no fear at all.
Given the living man, there will be found clothes for him; he
will find himself clothes. But the suit-of-clothes pretending
that it is both clothes and man—! We cannot “fight the French”
by three hundred thousand red uniforms; there must be _men_
in the inside of them! Semblance, I assert, must actually _not_
do and will reject. We can partly understand what those poor
Puritans meant. Laud dedicating that St. Catherine Creed’s
Church, in the manner we have it described; with his multiplied ceremonial bowings, gesticulations, exclamations: surely
it is rather the rigorous formal Pedant, intent on his “College-rules,” than the earnest Prophet intent on the essence of
the matter!
Puritanism found such forms insupportable; trampled on
such forms;—we have to excuse it for saying, No form at all
rather than such! It stood preaching in its bare pulpit, with
nothing but the Bible in its hand. Nay, a man preaching from
his earnest soul into the earnest souls of men: is not this virtu-
divorce itself from Reality. If Semblance do,—why then there
must be men found to rebel against Semblance, for it has
become a lie! These two Antagonisms at war here, in the case
of Laud and the Puritans, are as old nearly as the world. They
went to fierce battle over England in that age; and fought out
their confused controversy to a certain length, with many results for all of us.
IN THE AGE which directly followed that of the Puritans, their
cause or themselves were little likely to have justice done them.
Charles Second and his Rochesters were not the kind of men
you would set to judge what the worth or meaning of such
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men might have been. That there could be any faith or truth
in the life of a man, was what these poor Rochesters, and the
age they ushered in, had forgotten. Puritanism was hung on
gibbets,—like the bones of the leading Puritans. Its work
nevertheless went on accomplishing itself. All true work of a
man, hang the author of it on what gibbet you like, must and
will accomplish itself. We have our Habeas-Corpus, our free
Representation of the People; acknowledgment, wide as the
world, that all men are, or else must, shall, and will become,
designate these men as wicked now. Few Puritans of note but
find their apologists somewhere, and have a certain reverence
paid them by earnest men. One Puritan, I think, and almost
he alone, our poor Cromwell, seems to hang yet on the gibbet, and find no hearty apologist anywhere. Him neither saint
nor sinner will acquit of great wickedness. A man of ability,
infinite talent, courage, and so forth: but he betrayed the Cause.
Selfish ambition, dishonesty, duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical Tartuffe; turning all that noble Struggle for constitu-
what we call free men;—men with their life grounded on
reality and justice, not on tradition, which has become unjust
and a chimera! This in part, and much besides this, was the
work of the Puritans.
And indeed, as these things became gradually manifest, the
character of the Puritans began to clear itself. Their memories
were, one after another, taken down from the gibbet; nay a
certain portion of them are now, in these days, as good as
canonized. Eliot, Hampden, Pym, nay Ludlow, Hutchinson,
Vane himself, are admitted to be a kind of Heroes; political
Conscript Fathers, to whom in no small degree we owe what
makes us a free England: it would not be safe for anybody to
tional Liberty into a sorry farce played for his own benefit:
this and worse is the character they give of Cromwell. And
then there come contrasts with Washington and others; above
all, with these noble Pyms and Hampdens, whose noble work
he stole for himself, and ruined into a futility and deformity.
This view of Cromwell seems to me the not unnatural product of a century like the Eighteenth. As we said of the Valet,
so of the Sceptic: He does not know a Hero when he sees
him! The Valet expected purple mantles, gilt sceptres, bodyguards and flourishes of trumpets: the Sceptic of the Eighteenth century looks for regulated respectable Formulas, “Principles,” or what else he may call them; a style of speech and
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conduct which has got to seem “respectable,” which can plead
for itself in a handsome articulate manner, and gain the suffrages of an enlightened sceptical Eighteenth century! It is, at
bottom, the same thing that both the Valet and he expect:
the garnitures of some acknowledged royalty, which then they
will acknowledge! The King coming to them in the rugged
unformulistic state shall be no King.
For my own share, far be it from me to say or insinuate a
word of disparagement against such characters as Hampden,
break forth into any fire of brotherly love for these men? They
are become dreadfully dull men! One breaks down often
enough in the constitutional eloquence of the admirable Pym,
with his “seventhly and lastly.” You find that it may be the
admirablest thing in the world, but that it is heavy,—heavy as
lead, barren as brick-clay; that, in a word, for you there is
little or nothing now surviving there! One leaves all these
Nobilities standing in their niches of honor: the rugged outcast Cromwell, he is the man of them all in whom one still
Elliot, Pym; whom I believe to have been right worthy and
useful men. I have read diligently what books and documents
about them I could come at;—with the honestest wish to
admire, to love and worship them like Heroes; but I am sorry
to say, if the real truth must be told, with very indifferent
success! At bottom, I found that it would not do. They are
very noble men, these; step along in their stately way, with
their measured euphemisms, philosophies, parliamentary eloquences, Ship-moneys, Monarchies of Man; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. But the heart remains cold before them; the fancy alone endeavors to get up
some worship of them. What man’s heart does, in reality,
finds human stuff. The great savage Baresark: he could write
no euphemistic Monarchy of Man; did not speak, did not work
with glib regularity; had no straight story to tell for himself
anywhere. But he stood bare, not cased in euphemistic coatof-mail; he grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to heart,
with the naked truth of things! That, after all, is the sort of
man for one. I plead guilty to valuing such a man beyond all
other sorts of men. Smooth-shaven Respectabilities not a few
one finds, that are not good for much. Small thanks to a man
for keeping his hands clean, who would not touch the work
but with gloves on!
Neither, on the whole, does this constitutional tolerance of
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the Eighteenth century for the other happier Puritans seem to
be a very great matter. One might say, it is but a piece of
Formulism and Scepticism, like the rest. They tell us, It was
a sorrowful thing to consider that the foundation of our English Liberties should have been laid by “Superstition.” These
Puritans came forward with Calvinistic incredible Creeds,
Anti-Laudisms, Westminster Confessions; demanding, chiefly
of all, that they should have liberty to worship in their own
way. Liberty to tax themselves: that was the thing they should
small reason in, it will not go well with him, I think! He
must try some other climate than this. Tax-gatherer? Money?
He will say: “Take my money, since you can, and it is so
desirable to you; take it,—and take yourself away with it; and
leave me alone to my work here. I am still here; can still work,
after all the money you have taken from me!” But if they
come to him, and say, “Acknowledge a Lie; pretend to say
you are worshipping God, when you are not doing it: believe
not the thing that you find true, but the thing that I find, or
have demanded! It was Superstition, Fanaticism, disgraceful
ignorance of Constitutional Philosophy to insist on the other
thing!—Liberty to tax oneself? Not to pay out money from
your pocket except on reason shown? No century, I think,
but a rather barren one would have fixed on that as the first
right of man! I should say, on the contrary, A just man will
generally have better cause than money in what shape soever,
before deciding to revolt against his Government. Ours is a
most confused world; in which a good man will be thankful
to see any kind of Government maintain itself in a not insupportable manner: and here in England, to this hour, if he is
not ready to pay a great many taxes which he can see very
pretend to find true!” He will answer: “No; by God’s help,
no! You may take my purse; but I cannot have my moral Self
annihilated. The purse is any Highwayman’s who might meet
me with a loaded pistol: but the Self is mine and God my
Maker’s; it is not yours; and I will resist you to the death, and
revolt against you, and, on the whole, front all manner of
extremities, accusations and confusions, in defence of that!”—
Really, it seems to me the one reason which could justify
revolting, this of the Puritans. It has been the soul of all just
revolts among men. Not Hunger alone produced even the
French Revolution; no, but the feeling of the insupportable
all-pervading Falsehood which had now embodied itself in
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Hunger, in universal material Scarcity and Nonentity, and
thereby become indisputably false in the eyes of all! We will
leave the Eighteenth century with its “liberty to tax itself.”
We will not astonish ourselves that the meaning of such men
as the Puritans remained dim to it. To men who believe in no
reality at all, how shall a real human soul, the intensest of all
realities, as it were the Voice of this world’s Maker still speaking to us,—be intelligible? What it cannot reduce into constitutional doctrines relative to “taxing,” or other the like material interest, gross, palpable to the sense, such a century will
needs reject as an amorphous heap of rubbish. Hampdens,
Pyms and Ship-money will be the theme of much constitutional eloquence, striving to be fervid;—which will glitter, if
not as fire does, then as ice does: and the irreducible Cromwell
will remain a chaotic mass of “madness,” “hypocrisy,” and
much else.
FROM OF OLD, I will confess, this theory of Cromwell’s falsity
has been incredible to me. Nay I cannot believe the like, of
any Great Man whatever. Multitudes of Great Men figure in
History as false selfish men; but if we will consider it, they are
but figures for us, unintelligible shadows; we do not see into
them as men that could have existed at all. A superficial unbelieving generation only, with no eye but for the surfaces
and semblances of things, could form such notions of Great
Men. Can a great soul be possible without a conscience in it,
the essence of all real souls, great or small?—No, we cannot
figure Cromwell as a Falsity and Fatuity; the longer I study
him and his career, I believe this the less. Why should we?
There is no evidence of it. Is it not strange that, after all the
mountains of calumny this man has been subject to, after
being represented as the very prince of liars, who never, or
hardly ever, spoke truth, but always some cunning counterfeit of truth, there should not yet have been one falsehood
brought clearly home to him? A prince of liars, and no lie
spoken by him. Not one that I could yet get sight of. It is like
Pococke asking Grotius, Where is your proof of Mahomet’s
Pigeon? No proof!—Let us leave all these calumnious chimeras, as chimeras ought to be left. They are not portraits of the
man; they are distracted phantasms of him, the joint product
of hatred and darkness.
Looking at the man’s life with our own eyes, it seems to
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me, a very different hypothesis suggests itself. What little we
know of his earlier obscure years, distorted as it has come
down to us, does it not all betoken an earnest, affectionate,
sincere kind of man? His nervous melancholic temperament
indicates rather a seriousness too deep for him. Of those stories of “Spectres;” of the white Spectre in broad daylight, predicting that he should be King of England, we are not bound
to believe much;—probably no more than of the other black
Spectre, or Devil in person, to whom the Officer saw him
youth; but if so, speedily repents, abandons all this: not much
above twenty, he is married, settled as an altogether grave and
quiet man. “He pays back what money he had won at gambling,” says the story;—he does not think any gain of that
kind could be really his. It is very interesting, very natural,
this “conversion,” as they well name it; this awakening of a
great true soul from the worldly slough, to see into the awful
truth of things;—to see that Time and its shows all rested on
Eternity, and this poor Earth of ours was the threshold either
sell himself before Worcester Fight! But the mournful, oversensitive, hypochondriac humor of Oliver, in his young years,
is otherwise indisputably known. The Huntingdon Physician
told Sir Philip Warwick himself, He had often been sent for
at midnight; Mr. Cromwell was full of hypochondria, thought
himself near dying, and “had fancies about the Town-cross.”
These things are significant. Such an excitable deep-feeling
nature, in that rugged stubborn strength of his, is not the
symptom of falsehood; it is the symptom and promise of
quite other than falsehood!
The young Oliver is sent to study Law; falls, or is said to
have fallen, for a little period, into some of the dissipations of
of Heaven or of Hell! Oliver’s life at St. Ives and Ely, as a
sober industrious Farmer, is it not altogether as that of a true
and devout man? He has renounced the world and its ways;
its prizes are not the thing that can enrich him. He tills the
earth; he reads his Bible; daily assembles his servants round
him to worship God. He comforts persecuted ministers, is
fond of preachers; nay can himself preach,—exhorts his neighbors to be wise, to redeem the time. In all this what “hypocrisy,” “ambition,” “cant,” or other falsity? The man’s hopes, I
do believe, were fixed on the other Higher World; his aim to
get well thither, by walking well through his humble course
in this world. He courts no notice: what could notice here do
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for him? “Ever in his great Taskmaster’s eye.”
It is striking, too, how he comes out once into public view;
he, since no other is willing to come: in resistance to a public
grievance. I mean, in that matter of the Bedford Fens. No
one else will go to law with Authority; therefore he will. That
matter once settled, he returns back into obscurity, to his Bible
and his Plough. “Gain influence”? His influence is the most
legitimate; derived from personal knowledge of him, as a just,
religious, reasonable and determined man. In this way he has
to the “crowning mercy” of Worcester Fight: all this is good
and genuine for a deep-hearted Calvinistic Cromwell. Only
to vain unbelieving Cavaliers, worshipping not God but their
own “love-locks,” frivolities and formalities, living quite apart
from contemplations of God, living without God in the
world, need it seem hypocritical.
Nor will his participation in the King’s death involve him
in condemnation with us. It is a stern business killing of a
King! But if you once go to war with him, it lies there; this
lived till past forty; old age is now in view of him, and the
earnest portal of Death and Eternity; it was at this point that
he suddenly became “ambitious”! I do not interpret his Parliamentary mission in that way!
His successes in Parliament, his successes through the war,
are honest successes of a brave man; who has more resolution
in the heart of him, more light in the head of him than other
men. His prayers to God; his spoken thanks to the God of
Victory, who had preserved him safe, and carried him forward so far, through the furious clash of a world all set in
conflict, through desperate-looking envelopments at Dunbar;
through the death-hail of so many battles; mercy after mercy;
and all else lies there. Once at war, you have made wager of
battle with him: it is he to die, or else you. Reconciliation is
problematic; may be possible, or, far more likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally admitted that the Parliament,
having vanquished Charles First, had no way of making any
tenable arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian party,
apprehensive now of the Independents, were most anxious to
do so; anxious indeed as for their own existence; but it could
not be. The unhappy Charles, in those final Hampton-Court
negotiations, shows himself as a man fatally incapable of being dealt with. A man who, once for all, could not and would
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resent to him the real fact of the matter; nay worse, whose
word did not at all represent his thought. We may say this of
him without cruelty, with deep pity rather: but it is true and
undeniable. Forsaken there of all but the name of Kingship,
he still, finding himself treated with outward respect as a King,
fancied that he might play off party against party, and smuggle
himself into his old power by deceiving both. Alas, they both
discovered that he was deceiving them. A man whose word
will not inform you at all what he means or will do, is not a
dismiss their city-tapsters, flimsy riotous persons, and choose
substantial yeomen, whose heart was in the work, to be soldiers for them: this is advice by a man who saw. Fact answers,
if you see into Fact! Cromwell’s Ironsides were the embodiment of this insight of his; men fearing God; and without
any other fear. No more conclusively genuine set of fighters
ever trod the soil of England, or of any other land.
Neither will we blame greatly that word of Cromwell’s to
them; which was so blamed: “If the King should meet me in
man you can bargain with. You must get out of that man’s
way, or put him out of yours! The Presbyterians, in their despair, were still for believing Charles, though found false,
unbelievable again and again. Not so Cromwell: “For all our
fighting,” says he, “we are to have a little bit of paper?” No!—
In fact, everywhere we have to note the decisive practical
eye of this man; how he drives towards the practical and practicable; has a genuine insight into what is fact. Such an intellect, I maintain, does not belong to a false man: the false man
sees false shows, plausibilities, expediences: the true man is
needed to discern even practical truth. Cromwell’s advice about
the Parliament’s Army, early in the contest, How they were to
battle, I would kill the King.” Why not? These words were
spoken to men who stood as before a Higher than Kings.
They had set more than their own lives on the cast. The Parliament may call it, in official language, a fighting “for the
King;” but we, for our share, cannot understand that. To us it
is no dilettante work, no sleek officiality; it is sheer rough
death and earnest. They have brought it to the calling-forth
of War; horrid internecine fight, man grappling with man in
fire-eyed rage,—the infernal element in man called forth, to
try it by that! Do that therefore; since that is the thing to be
done.—The successes of Cromwell seem to me a very natural
thing! Since he was not shot in battle, they were an inevitable
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thing. That such a man, with the eye to see, with the heart to
dare, should advance, from post to post, from victory to victory, till the Huntingdon Farmer became, by whatever name
you might call him, the acknowledged Strongest Man in England, virtually the King of England, requires no magic to
explain it!—
TRULY IT IS A SAD THING for a people, as for a man, to fall into
Scepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity; not to know Sincerity when they see it. For this world, and for all worlds,
what curse is so fatal? The heart lying dead, the eye cannot
see. What intellect remains is merely the vulpine intellect. That
a true King be sent them is of small use; they do not know
him when sent. They say scornfully, Is this your King? The
Hero wastes his heroic faculty in bootless contradiction from
the unworthy; and can accomplish little. For himself he does
accomplish a heroic life, which is much, which is all; but for
the world he accomplishes comparatively nothing. The wild
rude Sincerity, direct from Nature, is not glib in answering from
the witness-box: in your small-debt pie-powder court, he is
scouted as a counterfeit. The vulpine intellect “detects” him.
For being a man worth any thousand men, the response your
Knox, your Cromwell gets, is an argument for two centuries
whether he was a man at all. God’s greatest gift to this Earth is
sneeringly flung away. The miraculous talisman is a paltry plated
coin, not fit to pass in the shops as a common guinea.
Lamentable this! I say, this must be remedied. Till this be
remedied in some measure, there is nothing remedied. “Detect quacks”? Yes do, for Heaven’s sake; but know withal the
men that are to be trusted! Till we know that, what is all our
knowledge; how shall we even so much as “detect”? For the
vulpine sharpness, which considers itself to be knowledge,
and “detects” in that fashion, is far mistaken. Dupes indeed
are many: but, of all dupes, there is none so fatally situated as
he who lives in undue terror of being duped. The world does
exist; the world has truth in it, or it would not exist! First
recognize what is true, we shall then discern what is false; and
properly never till then.
“Know the men that are to be trusted:” alas, this is yet, in
these days, very far from us. The sincere alone can recognize
sincerity. Not a Hero only is needed, but a world fit for him;
a world not of Valets;—the Hero comes almost in vain to it
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otherwise! Yes, it is far from us: but it must come; thank
God, it is visibly coming. Till it do come, what have we?
Ballot-boxes, suffrages, French Revolutions:—if we are as
Valets, and do not know the Hero when we see him, what
good are all these? A heroic Cromwell comes; and for a hundred and fifty years he cannot have a vote from us. Why, the
insincere, unbelieving world is the natural property of the
Quack, and of the Father of quacks and quackeries! Misery,
confusion, unveracity are alone possible there. By ballot-boxes
phemisms, dainty little Falklands, didactic Chillingworths,
diplomatic Clarendons! Consider him. An outer hull of chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, almost
semi-madness; and yet such a clear determinate man’s-energy
working in the heart of that. A kind of chaotic man. The ray
as of pure starlight and fire, working in such an element of
boundless hypochondria, unformed black of darkness! And
yet withal this hypochondria, what was it but the very greatness of the man? The depth and tenderness of his wild affec-
we alter the figure of our Quack; but the substance of him
continues. The Valet-World has to be governed by the ShamHero, by the King merely dressed in King-gear. It is his; he is
its! In brief, one of two things: We shall either learn to know
a Hero, a true Governor and Captain, somewhat better, when
we see him; or else go on to be forever governed by the Unheroic;—had we ballot-boxes clattering at every street-corner,
there were no remedy in these.
Poor Cromwell,—great Cromwell! The inarticulate
Prophet; Prophet who could not speak. Rude, confused, struggling to utter himself, with his savage depth, with his wild
sincerity; and he looked so strange, among the elegant Eu-
tions: the quantity of sympathy he had with things,—the quantity of insight he would yet get into the heart of things, the
mastery he would yet get over things: this was his hypochondria. The man’s misery, as man’s misery always does, came of
his greatness. Samuel Johnson too is that kind of man. Sorrow-stricken, half-distracted; the wide element of mournful
black enveloping him,—wide as the world. It is the character
of a prophetic man; a man with his whole soul seeing, and
struggling to see.
On this ground, too, I explain to myself Cromwell’s reputed confusion of speech. To himself the internal meaning
was sun-clear; but the material with which he was to clothe it
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in utterance was not there. He had lived silent; a great unnamed sea of Thought round him all his days; and in his way
of life little call to attempt naming or uttering that. With his
sharp power of vision, resolute power of action, I doubt not
he could have learned to write Books withal, and speak fluently enough;—he did harder things than writing of Books.
This kind of man is precisely he who is fit for doing manfully
all things you will set him on doing. Intellect is not speaking
and logicizing; it is seeing and ascertaining. Virtue, Virtues,
used to assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till
some definite resolution rose among them, some “door of
hope,” as they would name it, disclosed itself. Consider that.
In tears, in fervent prayers, and cries to the great God, to have
pity on them, to make His light shine before them. They,
armed Soldiers of Christ, as they felt themselves to be; a little
band of Christian Brothers, who had drawn the sword against
a great black devouring world not Christian, but Mammonish,
Devilish,—they cried to God in their straits, in their extreme
manhood, herohood, is not fair-spoken immaculate regularity; it is first of all, what the Germans well name it, Tugend
(Taugend, dow-ing or Dough-tinesS), Courage and the Faculty to do. This basis of the matter Cromwell had in him.
One understands moreover how, though he could not speak
in Parliament, he might preach, rhapsodic preaching; above
all, how he might be great in extempore prayer. These are the
free outpouring utterances of what is in the heart: method is
not required in them; warmth, depth, sincerity are all that is
required. Cromwell’s habit of prayer is a notable feature of
him. All his great enterprises were commenced with prayer.
In dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his Officers and he
need, not to forsake the Cause that was His. The light which
now rose upon them,—how could a human soul, by any
means at all, get better light? Was not the purpose so formed
like to be precisely the best, wisest, the one to be followed
without hesitation any more? To them it was as the shining
of Heaven’s own Splendor in the waste-howling darkness; the
Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide them on their desolate perilous way. Was it not such? Can a man’s soul, to this
hour, get guidance by any other method than intrinsically by
that same,—devout prostration of the earnest struggling soul
before the Highest, the Giver of all Light; be such _prayer_ a
spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one? There
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is no other method. “Hypocrisy”? One begins to be weary of
all that. They who call it so, have no right to speak on such
matters. They never formed a purpose, what one can call a
purpose. They went about balancing expediencies, plausibilities; gathering votes, advices; they never were alone with the
truth of a thing at all.—Cromwell’s prayers were likely to be
“eloquent,” and much more than that. His was the heart of a
man who could pray.
But indeed his actual Speeches, I apprehend, were not nearly
his Speeches! How came he not to study his words a little,
before flinging them out to the public? If the words were true
words, they could be left to shift for themselves.
But with regard to Cromwell’s “lying,” we will make one
remark. This, I suppose, or something like this, to have been
the nature of it. All parties found themselves deceived in him;
each party understood him to be meaning this, heard him
even say so, and behold he turns out to have been meaning
that! He was, cry they, the chief of liars. But now, intrinsi-
so ineloquent, incondite, as they look. We find he was, what
all speakers aim to be, an impressive speaker, even in Parliament; one who, from the first, had weight. With that rude
passionate voice of his, he was always understood to mean
something, and men wished to know what. He disregarded
eloquence, nay despised and disliked it; spoke always without
premeditation of the words he was to use. The Reporters, too,
in those days seem to have been singularly candid; and to have
given the Printer precisely what they found on their own notepaper. And withal, what a strange proof is it of Cromwell’s
being the premeditative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a play
before the world, That to the last he took no more charge of
cally, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a false man
in such times, but simply of a superior man? Such a man
must have reticences in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon
his sleeve for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far!
There is no use for any man’s taking up his abode in a house
built of glass. A man always is to be himself the judge how
much of his mind he will show to other men; even to those
he would have work along with him. There are impertinent
inquiries made: your rule is, to leave the inquirer uninformed
on that matter; not, if you can help it, misinformed, but precisely as dark as he was! This, could one hit the right phrase of
response, is what the wise and faithful man would aim to
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answer in such a case.
Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of
small subaltern parties; uttered to them a part of his mind.
Each little party thought him all its own. Hence their rage,
one and all, to find him not of their party, but of his own
party. Was it his blame? At all seasons of his history he must
have felt, among such people, how, if he explained to them
the deeper insight he had, they must either have shuddered
aghast at it, or believing it, their own little compact hypoth-
Fontenelle, “and open only my little finger.”
And if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine, how
much more in all departments of practice! He that cannot
withal keep his mind to himself cannot practice any considerable thing whatever. And we call it “dissimulation,” all this?
What would you think of calling the general of an army a
dissembler because he did not tell every corporal and private
soldier, who pleased to put the question, what his thoughts
were about everything?—Cromwell, I should rather say, man-
esis must have gone wholly to wreck. They could not have
worked in his province any more; nay perhaps they could not
now have worked in their own province. It is the inevitable
position of a great man among small men. Small men, most
active, useful, are to be seen everywhere, whose whole activity
depends on some conviction which to you is palpably a limited one; imperfect, what we call an error. But would it be a
kindness always, is it a duty always or often, to disturb them
in that? Many a man, doing loud work in the world, stands
only on some thin traditionality, conventionality; to him indubitable, to you incredible: break that beneath him, he sinks
to endless depths! “I might have my hand full of truth,” said
aged all this in a manner we must admire for its perfection.
An endless vortex of such questioning “corporals” rolled confusedly round him through his whole course; whom he did
answer. It must have been as a great true-seeing man that he
managed this too. Not one proved falsehood, as I said; not
one! Of what man that ever wound himself through such a
coil of things will you say so much?—
BUT IN FACT THERE ARE TWO ERRORS, widely prevalent, which
pervert to the very basis our judgments formed about such
men as Cromwell; about their “ambition,” “falsity,” and such
like. The first is what I might call substituting the goal of
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their career for the course and starting-point of it. The vulgar
Historian of a Cromwell fancies that he had determined on
being Protector of England, at the time when he was ploughing the marsh lands of Cambridgeshire. His career lay all
mapped out: a program of the whole drama; which he then
step by step dramatically unfolded, with all manner of cunning, deceptive dramaturgy, as he went on,—the hollow,
scheming [Gr.] Upokrites, or Play-actor, that he was! This is a
radical perversion; all but universal in such cases. And think
it altogether; even the best kinds of History only remember it
now and then. To remember it duly with rigorous perfection, as in the fact it stood, requires indeed a rare faculty; rare,
nay impossible. A very Shakspeare for faculty; or more than
Shakspeare; who could enact a brother man’s biography, see
with the brother man’s eyes at all points of his course what
things he saw; in short, know his course and him, as few “Historians” are like to do. Half or more of all the thick-plied
perversions which distort our image of Cromwell, will disap-
for an instant how different the fact is! How much does one
of us foresee of his own life? Short way ahead of us it is all
dim; an unwound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions,
attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell had
not his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he
needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to
enact dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but
to him it was in no measure so. What absurdities would fall
away of themselves, were this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view by History! Historians indeed will tell you that
they do keep it in view;—but look whether such is practically the fact! Vulgar History, as in this Cromwell’s case, omits
pear, if we honestly so much as try to represent them so; in
sequence, as they were; not in the lump, as they are thrown
down before us.
But a second error, which I think the generality commit,
refers to this same “ambition” itself. We exaggerate the ambition of Great Men; we mistake what the nature of it is. Great
Men are not ambitious in that sense; he is a small poor man
that is ambitious so. Examine the man who lives in misery
because he does not shine above other men; who goes about
producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and
claims; struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody for God’s sake, to acknowledge him a great man,
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and set him over the heads of men! Such a creature is among
the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. A great man? A
poor morbid prurient empty man; fitter for the ward of a
hospital, than for a throne among men. I advise you to keep
out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths; unless you
will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about him,
he cannot live. It is the emptiness of the man, not his greatness. Because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts
that you would find something in him. In good truth, I be-
ride in gilt carriages to Whitehall, and have clerks with bundles
of papers haunting him, “Decide this, decide that,” which in
utmost sorrow of heart no man can perfectly decide! What
could gilt carriages do for this man? From of old, was there
not in his life a weight of meaning, a terror and a splendor as
of Heaven itself? His existence there as man set him beyond
the need of gilding. Death, Judgment and Eternity: these already lay as the background of whatsoever he thought or did.
All his life lay begirt as in a sea of nameless Thoughts, which
lieve no great man, not so much as a genuine man who had
health and real substance in him of whatever magnitude, was
ever much tormented in this way.
Your Cromwell, what good could it do him to be “noticed” by noisy crowds of people? God his Maker already
noticed him. He, Cromwell, was already there; no notice
would make him other than he already was. Till his hair was
grown gray; and Life from the down-hill slope was all seen to
be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable matter
how it went,—he had been content to plough the ground,
and read his Bible. He in his old days could not support it
any longer, without selling himself to Falsehood, that he might
no speech of a mortal could name. God’s Word, as the Puritan prophets of that time had read it: this was great, and all
else was little to him. To call such a man “ambitious,” to
figure him as the prurient wind-bag described above, seems
to me the poorest solecism. Such a man will say: “Keep your
gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape clerks,
your influentialities, your important businesses. Leave me
alone, leave me alone; there is too much of life in me already!”
Old Samuel Johnson, the greatest soul in England in his day,
was not ambitious. “Corsica Boswell” flaunted at public shows
with printed ribbons round his hat; but the great old Samuel
stayed at home. The world-wide soul wrapt up in its thoughts,
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in its sorrows;—what could paradings, and ribbons in the
hat, do for it?
Ah yes, I will say again: The great silent men! Looking round
on the noisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning,
actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great
Empire of Silence. The noble silent men, scattered here and
there, each in his department; silently thinking, silently working; whom no Morning Newspaper makes mention of! They
are the salt of the Earth. A country that has none or few of
Johnson says he was, by want of money, and nothing other, one
might ask, “Why do not you too get up and speak; promulgate
your system, found your sect?” “Truly,” he will answer, “I am
continent of my thought hitherto; happily I have yet had the
ability to keep it in me, no compulsion strong enough to speak
it. My ‘system’ is not for promulgation first of all; it is for
serving myself to live by. That is the great purpose of it to me.
And then the ‘honor’? Alas, yes;—but as Cato said of the statue:
So many statues in that Forum of yours, may it not be better if
these is in a bad way. Like a forest which had no roots; which
had all turned into leaves and boughs;—which must soon
wither and be no forest. Woe for us if we had nothing but
what we can show, or speak. Silence, the great Empire of Silence: higher than the stars; deeper than the Kingdoms of
Death! It alone is great; all else is small.—I hope we English
will long maintain our grand talent pour le silence. Let others
that cannot do without standing on barrel-heads, to spout,
and be seen of all the market-place, cultivate speech exclusively,—become a most green forest without roots! Solomon
says, There is a time to speak; but also a time to keep silence.
Of some great silent Samuel, not urged to writing, as old Samuel
they ask, Where is Cato’s statue?”—
But now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let me
say that there are two kinds of ambition; one wholly blamable, the other laudable and inevitable. Nature has provided
that the great silent Samuel shall not be silent too long. The
selfish wish to shine over others, let it be accounted altogether
poor and miserable. “Seekest thou great things, seek them
not:” this is most true. And yet, I say, there is an irrepressible
tendency in every man to develop himself according to the
magnitude which Nature has made him of; to speak out, to
act out, what nature has laid in him. This is proper, fit, inevitable; nay it is a duty, and even the summary of duties for a
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man. The meaning of life here on earth might be defined as
consisting in this: To unfold your self, to work what thing
you have the faculty for. It is a necessity for the human being,
the first law of our existence. Coleridge beautifully remarks
that the infant learns to speak by this necessity it feels.—We
will say therefore: To decide about ambition, whether it is
bad or not, you have two things to take into view. Not the
coveting of the place alone, but the fitness of the man for the
place withal: that is the question. Perhaps the place was his;
for him to do priceless divine work for his country and the
whole world. That the perfect Heavenly Law might be made
Law on this Earth; that the prayer he prayed daily, “Thy kingdom come,” was at length to be fulfilled! If you had convinced his judgment of this; that it was possible, practicable;
that he the mournful silent Samuel was called to take a part
in it! Would not the whole soul of the man have flamed up
into a divine clearness, into noble utterance and determination to act; casting all sorrows and misgivings under his feet,
perhaps he had a natural right, and even obligation, to seek
the place! Mirabeau’s ambition to be Prime Minister, how shall
we blame it, if he were “the only man in France that could have
done any good there”? Hopefuler perhaps had he not so clearly
felt how much good he could do! But a poor Necker, who
could do no good, and had even felt that he could do none, yet
sitting broken-hearted because they had flung him out, and he
was now quit of it, well might Gibbon mourn over him.—
Nature, I say, has provided amply that the silent great man shall
strive to speak withal; too amply, rather!
Fancy, for example, you had revealed to the brave old Samuel
Johnson, in his shrouded-up existence, that it was possible
counting all affliction and contradiction small,—the whole
dark element of his existence blazing into articulate radiance
of light and lightning? It were a true ambition this! And think
now how it actually was with Cromwell. From of old, the
sufferings of God’s Church, true zealous Preachers of the truth
flung into dungeons, whips, set on pillories, their ears crops
off, God’s Gospel-cause trodden under foot of the unworthy: all this had lain heavy on his soul. Long years he had
looked upon it, in silence, in prayer; seeing no remedy on
Earth; trusting well that a remedy in Heaven’s goodness would
come,—that such a course was false, unjust, and could not
last forever. And now behold the dawn of it; after twelve years
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silent waiting, all England stirs itself; there is to be once more
a Parliament, the Right will get a voice for itself: inexpressible
well-grounded hope has come again into the Earth. Was not
such a Parliament worth being a member of? Cromwell threw
down his ploughs, and hastened thither.
He spoke there,—rugged bursts of earnestness, of a selfseen truth, where we get a glimpse of them. He worked there;
he fought and strove, like a strong true giant of a man, through
cannon-tumult and all else,—on and on, till the Cause tri-
true, God’s truth? And if true, was it not then the very thing
to do? The strongest practical intellect in England dared to
answer, Yes! This I call a noble true purpose; is it not, in its
own dialect, the noblest that could enter into the heart of
Statesman or man? For a Knox to take it up was something;
but for a Cromwell, with his great sound sense and experience of what our world was,—History, I think, shows it only
this once in such a degree. I account it the culminating point
of Protestantism; the most heroic phasis that “Faith in the
umphed, its once so formidable enemies all swept from before it, and the dawn of hope had become clear light of victory and certainty. That he stood there as the strongest soul
of England, the undisputed Hero of all England,—what of
this? It was possible that the Law of Christ’s Gospel could
now establish itself in the world! The Theocracy which John
Knox in his pulpit might dream of as a “devout imagination,” this practical man, experienced in the whole chaos of
most rough practice, dared to consider as capable of being
realized. Those that were highest in Christ’s Church, the
devoutest wisest men, were to rule the land: in some considerable degree, it might be so and should be so. Was it not
Bible” was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it: that it
were made manifest to one of us, how we could make the
Right supremely victorious over Wrong, and all that we had
longed and prayed for, as the highest good to England and all
lands, an attainable fact!
Well, I must say, the vulpine intellect, with its knowingness,
its alertness and expertness in “detecting hypocrites,” seems to
me a rather sorry business. We have had but one such Statesman in England; one man, that I can get sight of, who ever
had in the heart of him any such purpose at all. One man, in
the course of fifteen hundred years; and this was his welcome.
He had adherents by the hundred or the ten; opponents by
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the million. Had England rallied all round him,—why, then,
England might have been a Christian land! As it is, vulpine
knowingness sits yet at its hopeless problem, “Given a world
of Knaves, to educe an Honesty from their united action;”—
how cumbrous a problem, you may see in Chancery LawCourts, and some other places! Till at length, by Heaven’s
just anger, but also by Heaven’s great grace, the matter begins
to stagnate; and this problem is becoming to all men a palpably hopeless one.—
BUT WITH REGARD to Cromwell and his purposes: Hume, and
a multitude following him, come upon me here with an admission that Cromwell was sincere at first; a sincere “Fanatic”
at first, but gradually became a “Hypocrite” as things opened
round him. This of the Fanatic-Hypocrite is Hume’s theory
of it; extensively applied since,—to Mahomet and many others. Think of it seriously, you will find something in it; not
much, not all, very far from all. Sincere hero hearts do not
sink in this miserable manner. The Sun flings forth impurities, gets balefully incrusted with spots; but it does not quench
itself, and become no Sun at all, but a mass of Darkness! I
will venture to say that such never befell a great deep Cromwell;
I think, never. Nature’s own lionhearted Son; Antaeus-like,
his strength is got by touching the Earth, his Mother; lift him
up from the Earth, lift him up into Hypocrisy, Inanity, his
strength is gone. We will not assert that Cromwell was an
immaculate man; that he fell into no faults, no insincerities
among the rest. He was no dilettante professor of “perfections,” “immaculate conducts.” He was a rugged Orson, rending his rough way through actual true work,—doubtless with
many a fall therein. Insincerities, faults, very many faults daily
and hourly: it was too well known to him; known to God
and him! The Sun was dimmed many a time; but the Sun
had not himself grown a Dimness. Cromwell’s last words, as
he lay waiting for death, are those of a Christian heroic man.
Broken prayers to God, that He would judge him and this
Cause, He since man could not, in justice yet in pity. They
are most touching words. He breathed out his wild great soul,
its toils and sins all ended now, into the presence of his Maker,
in this manner.
I, for one, will not call the man a Hypocrite! Hypocrite,
mummer, the life of him a mere theatricality; empty barren
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quack, hungry for the shouts of mobs? The man had made
obscurity do very well for him till his head was gray; and now
he was, there as he stood recognized unblamed, the virtual
King of England. Cannot a man do without King’s Coaches
and Cloaks? Is it such a blessedness to have clerks forever pestering you with bundles of papers in red tape? A simple
Diocletian prefers planting of cabbages; a George Washington, no very immeasurable man, does the like. One would
say, it is what any genuine man could do; and would do. The
scattered Cavalier party in that country had one: Montrose,
the noblest of all the Cavaliers; an accomplished, gallanthearted, splendid man; what one may call the Hero-Cavalier.
Well, look at it; on the one hand subjects without a King; on
the other a King without subjects! The subjects without King
can do nothing; the subjectless King can do something. This
Montrose, with a handful of Irish or Highland savages, few
of them so much as guns in their hands, dashes at the drilled
Puritan armies like a wild whirlwind; sweeps them, time af-
instant his real work were out in the matter of Kingship,—
away with it!
Let us remark, meanwhile, how indispensable everywhere a
King is, in all movements of men. It is strikingly shown, in
this very War, what becomes of men when they cannot find a
Chief Man, and their enemies can. The Scotch Nation was all
but unanimous in Puritanism; zealous and of one mind about
it, as in this English end of the Island was always far from
being the case. But there was no great Cromwell among them;
poor tremulous, hesitating, diplomatic Argyles and such like:
none of them had a heart true enough for the truth, or durst
commit himself to the truth. They had no leader; and the
ter time, some five times over, from the field before him. He
was at one period, for a short while, master of all Scotland.
One man; but he was a man; a million zealous men, but without the one; they against him were powerless! Perhaps of all
the persons in that Puritan struggle, from first to last, the
single indispensable one was verily Cromwell. To see and dare,
and decide; to be a fixed pillar in the welter of uncertainty;—
a King among them, whether they called him so or not.
PRECISELY HERE, however, lies the rub for Cromwell. His other
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Thomas Carlyle
tion of the Protectorship, is what no one can pardon him. He
had fairly grown to be King in England; Chief Man of the
victorious party in England: but it seems he could not do
without the King’s Cloak, and sold himself to perdition in
order to get it. Let us see a little how this was.
England, Scotland, Ireland, all lying now subdued at the
feet of the Puritan Parliament, the practical question arose,
What was to be done with it? How will you govern these
Nations, which Providence in a wondrous way has given up
the Law of God’s Gospel, to which He through us has given
the victory, shall establish itself, or try to establish itself, in
this land!
For three years, Cromwell says, this question had been
sounded in the ears of the Parliament. They could make no
answer; nothing but talk, talk. Perhaps it lies in the nature of
parliamentary bodies; perhaps no Parliament could in such
case make any answer but even that of talk, talk! Nevertheless
the question must and shall be answered. You sixty men there,
to your disposal? Clearly those hundred surviving members
of the Long Parliament, who sit there as supreme authority,
cannot continue forever to sit. What is to be done?—It was a
question which theoretical constitution-builders may find easy
to answer; but to Cromwell, looking there into the real practical facts of it, there could be none more complicated. He
asked of the Parliament, What it was they would decide upon?
It was for the Parliament to say. Yet the Soldiers too, however
contrary to Formula, they who had purchased this victory
with their blood, it seemed to them that they also should
have something to say in it! We will not “for all our fighting
have nothing but a little piece of paper.” We understand that
becoming fast odious, even despicable, to the whole nation,
whom the nation already calls Rump Parliament, you cannot
continue to sit there: who or what then is to follow? “Free
Parliament,” right of Election, Constitutional Formulas of
one sort or the other,—the thing is a hungry Fact coming on
us, which we must answer or be devoured by it! And who are
you that prate of Constitutional Formulas, rights of Parliament? You have had to kill your King, to make Pride’s Purges,
to expel and banish by the law of the stronger whosoever
would not let your Cause prosper: there are but fifty or threescore of you left there, debating in these days. Tell us what we
shall do; not in the way of Formula, but of practicable Fact!
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How they did finally answer, remains obscure to this day.
The diligent Godwin himself admits that he cannot make it
out. The likeliest is, that this poor Parliament still would not,
and indeed could not dissolve and disperse; that when it came
to the point of actually dispersing, they again, for the tenth or
twentieth time, adjourned it,—and Cromwell’s patience failed
him. But we will take the favorablest hypothesis ever started
for the Parliament; the favorablest, though I believe it is not
the true one, but too favorable.
outnumber us; the great numerical majority of England was
always indifferent to our Cause, merely looked at it and submitted to it. It is in weight and force, not by counting of
heads, that we are the majority! And now with your Formulas and Reform Bills, the whole matter, sorely won by our
swords, shall again launch itself to sea; become a mere hope,
and likelihood, small even as a likelihood? And it is not a
likelihood; it is a certainty, which we have won, by God’s
strength and our own right hands, and do now hold here.
According to this version: At the uttermost crisis, when
Cromwell and his Officers were met on the one hand, and
the fifty or sixty Rump Members on the other, it was suddenly told Cromwell that the Rump in its despair was answering in a very singular way; that in their splenetic envious
despair, to keep out the Army at least, these men were hurrying through the House a kind of Reform Bill,—Parliament
to be chosen by the whole of England; equable electoral division into districts; free suffrage, and the rest of it! A very questionable, or indeed for them an unquestionable thing. Reform Bill, free suffrage of Englishmen? Why, the Royalists
themselves, silenced indeed but not exterminated, perhaps
Cromwell walked down to these refractory Members; interrupted them in that rapid speed of their Reform Bill;—ordered them to begone, and talk there no more.—Can we not
forgive him? Can we not understand him? John Milton, who
looked on it all near at hand, could applaud him. The Reality
had swept the Formulas away before it. I fancy, most men who
were realities in England might see into the necessity of that.
The strong daring man, therefore, has set all manner of Formulas and logical superficialities against him; has dared appeal to the genuine Fact of this England, Whether it will support him or not? It is curious to see how he struggles to govern in some constitutional way; find some Parliament to sup195
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port him; but cannot. His first Parliament, the one they call
Barebones’s Parliament, is, so to speak, a Convocation of the
Notables. From all quarters of England the leading Ministers
and chief Puritan Officials nominate the men most distinguished by religious reputation, influence and attachment to
the true Cause: these are assembled to shape out a plan. They
sanctioned what was past; shaped as they could what was to
come. They were scornfully called Barebones’s Parliament: the
man’s name, it seems, was not Barebones, but Barbone,—a
he hereby sees himself, at this unexampled juncture, as it were
the one available Authority left in England, nothing between
England and utter Anarchy but him alone. Such is the undeniable Fact of his position and England’s, there and then. What
will he do with it? After deliberation, he decides that he will
accept it; will formally, with public solemnity, say and vow
before God and men, “Yes, the Fact is so, and I will do the
best I can with it!” Protectorship, Instrument of Government,—these are the external forms of the thing; worked out
good enough man. Nor was it a jest, their work; it was a
most serious reality,—a trial on the part of these Puritan
Notables how far the Law of Christ could become the Law
of this England. There were men of sense among them, men
of some quality; men of deep piety I suppose the most of
them were. They failed, it seems, and broke down, endeavoring to reform the Court of Chancery! They dissolved themselves, as incompetent; delivered up their power again into
the hands of the Lord General Cromwell, to do with it what
he liked and could.
What will he do with it? The Lord General Cromwell,
“Commander-in-chief of all the Forces raised and to be raised;”
and sanctioned as they could in the circumstances be, by the
Judges, by the leading Official people, “Council of Officers
and Persons of interest in the Nation:” and as for the thing
itself, undeniably enough, at the pass matters had now come
to, there was no alternative but Anarchy or that. Puritan England might accept it or not; but Puritan England was, in real
truth, saved from suicide thereby!—I believe the Puritan
People did, in an inarticulate, grumbling, yet on the whole
grateful and real way, accept this anomalous act of Oliver’s; at
least, he and they together made it good, and always better to
the last. But in their Parliamentary articulate way, they had
their difficulties, and never knew fully what to say to it!—
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Oliver’s second Parliament, properly his first regular Parliament, chosen by the rule laid down in the Instrument of
Government, did assemble, and worked;—but got, before
long, into bottomless questions as to the Protector’s right, as
to “usurpation,” and so forth; and had at the earliest legal day
to be dismissed. Cromwell’s concluding Speech to these men
is a remarkable one. So likewise to his third Parliament, in
similar rebuke for their pedantries and obstinacies. Most rude,
chaotic, all these Speeches are; but most earnest-looking. You
says; no man could tell what a day would bring forth: they
were “births of Providence,” God’s finger guided us on, and
we came at last to clear height of victory, God’s Cause triumphant in these Nations; and you as a Parliament could assemble together, and say in what manner all this could be
organized, reduced into rational feasibility among the affairs
of men. You were to help with your wise counsel in doing
that. “You have had such an opportunity as no Parliament in
England ever had.” Christ’s Law, the Right and True, was to
would say, it was a sincere helpless man; not used to speak the
great inorganic thought of him, but to act it rather! A helplessness of utterance, in such bursting fulness of meaning. He
talks much about “births of Providence:” All these changes,
so many victories and events, were not forethoughts, and theatrical contrivances of men, of me or of men; it is blind blasphemers that will persist in calling them so! He insists with a
heavy sulphurous wrathful emphasis on this. As he well might.
As if a Cromwell in that dark huge game he had been playing,
the world wholly thrown into chaos round him, had foreseen
it all, and played it all off like a precontrived puppet-show by
wood and wire! These things were foreseen by no man, he
be in some measure made the Law of this land. In place of
that, you have got into your idle pedantries, constitutionalities, bottomless cavillings and questionings about written laws
for my coming here;—and would send the whole matter into
Chaos again, because I have no Notary’s parchment, but only
God’s voice from the battle-whirlwind, for being President
among you! That opportunity is gone; and we know not when
it will return. You have had your constitutional Logic; and
Mammon’s Law, not Christ’s Law, rules yet in this land. “God
be judge between you and me!” These are his final words to
them: Take you your constitution-formulas in your hand;
and I my informal struggles, purposes, realities and acts; and
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“God be judge between you and me!”—
We said above what shapeless, involved chaotic things the
printed Speeches of Cromwell are. Wilfully ambiguous, unintelligible, say the most: a hypocrite shrouding himself in
confused Jesuitic jargon! To me they do not seem so. I will
say rather, they afforded the first glimpses I could ever get
into the reality of this Cromwell, nay into the possibility of
him. Try to believe that he means something, search lovingly
what that may be: you will find a real speech lying imprisoned
confused war against the best-conditioned of Kings! Try if
you can find that true. Scepticism writing about Belief may
have great gifts; but it is really ultra vires there. It is Blindness
laying down the Laws of Optics.—
Cromwell’s third Parliament split on the same rock as his
second. Ever the constitutional Formula: How came you there?
Show us some Notary parchment! Blind pedants:—”Why,
surely the same power which makes you a Parliament, that,
and something more, made me a Protector!” If my Protec-
in these broken rude tortuous utterances; a meaning in the
great heart of this inarticulate man! You will, for thc first time,
begin to see that he was a man; not an enigmatic chimera,
unintelligible to you, incredible to you. The Histories and
Biographies written of this Cromwell, written in shallow sceptical generations that could not know or conceive of a deep
believing man, are far more obscure than Cromwell’s Speeches.
You look through them only into the infinite vague of Black
and the Inane. “Heats and jealousies,” says Lord Clarendon
himself: “heats and jealousies,” mere crabbed whims, theories
and crotchets; these induced slow sober quiet Englishmen to
lay down their ploughs and work; and fly into red fury of
torship is nothing, what in the name of wonder is your
Parliamenteership, a reflex and creation of that?—
Parliaments having failed, there remained nothing but the
way of Despotism. Military Dictators, each with his district,
to coerce the Royalist and other gainsayers, to govern them, if
not by act of Parliament, then by the sword. Formula shall
not carry it, while the Reality is here! I will go on, protecting
oppressed Protestants abroad, appointing just judges, wise
managers, at home, cherishing true Gospel ministers; doing
the best I can to make England a Christian England, greater
than old Rome, the Queen of Protestant Christianity; I, since
you will not help me; I while God leaves me life!—Why did
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he not give it up; retire into obscurity again, since the Law
would not acknowledge him? cry several. That is where they
mistake. For him there was no giving of it up! Prime ministers have governed countries, Pitt, Pombal, Choiseul; and their
word was a law while it held: but this Prime Minister was
one that could not get resigned. Let him once resign, Charles
Stuart and the Cavaliers waited to kill him; to kill the Cause
and him. Once embarked, there is no retreat, no return. This
Prime Minister could retire no-whither except into his tomb.
growing weary with its long work! I think always too of his
poor Mother, now very old, living in that Palace of his; a
right brave woman; as indeed they lived all an honest Godfearing Household there: if she heard a shot go off, she thought
it was her son killed. He had to come to her at least once a
day, that she might see with her own eyes that he was yet
living. The poor old Mother!—What had this man gained;
what had he gained? He had a life of sore strife and toil, to his
last day. Fame, ambition, place in History? His dead body
One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days. His complaint is
incessant of the heavy burden Providence has laid on him.
Heavy; which he must bear till death. Old Colonel
Hutchinson, as his wife relates it, Hutchinson, his old battlemate, coming to see him on some indispensable business,
much against his will,—Cromwell “follows him to the door,”
in a most fraternal, domestic, conciliatory style; begs that he
would be reconciled to him, his old brother in arms; says
how much it grieves him to be misunderstood, deserted by
true fellow-soldiers, dear to him from of old: the rigorous
Hutchinson, cased in his Republican formula, sullenly goes
his way.—And the man’s head now white; his strong arm
was hung in chains, his “place in History,”—place in History
forsooth!—has been a place of ignominy, accusation, blackness and disgrace; and here, this day, who knows if it is not
rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to pronounce him not a knave and liar, but a genuinely honest man!
Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for
us? We walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step over
his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not spurn it, as we
step on it!—Let the Hero rest. It was not to men’s judgment
that he appealed; nor have men judged him very well.
Precisely a century and a year after this of Puritanism had
got itself hushed up into decent composure, and its results
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made smooth, in 1688, there broke out a far deeper explosion, much more difficult to hush up, known to all mortals,
and like to be long known, by the name of French Revolution. It is properly the third and final act of Protestantism;
the explosive confused return of mankind to Reality and Fact,
now that they were perishing of Semblance and Sham. We
call our English Puritanism the second act: “Well then, the
Bible is true; let us go by the Bible!” “In Church,” said Luther;
“In Church and State,” said Cromwell, “let us go by what
Europe, while Cromwell abode mainly in our little England,
are but as the high stilts on which the man is seen standing;
the stature of the man is not altered thereby. I find in him no
such sincerity as in Cromwell; only a far inferior sort. No
silent walking, through long years, with the Awful Unnamable
of this Universe; “walking with God,” as he called it; and
faith and strength in that alone: latent thought and valor, content to lie latent, then burst out as in blaze of Heaven’s lightning! Napoleon lived in an age when God was no longer be-
actually is God’s Truth.” Men have to return to reality; they
cannot live on semblance. The French Revolution, or third
act, we may well call the final one; for lower than that savage
Sansculottism men cannot go. They stand there on the nakedest
haggard Fact, undeniable in all seasons and circumstances; and
may and must begin again confidently to build up from that.
The French explosion, like the English one, got its King,—
who had no Notary parchment to show for himself. We have
still to glance for a moment at Napoleon, our second modern King.
Napoleon does by no means seem to me so great a man as
Cromwell. His enormous victories which reached over all
lieved; the meaning of all Silence, Latency, was thought to be
Nonentity: he had to begin not out of the Puritan Bible, but
out of poor Sceptical Encyclopedies. This was the length the
man carried it. Meritorious to get so far. His compact, prompt,
every way articulate character is in itself perhaps small, compared with our great chaotic inarticulate Cromwell’s. Instead
of “dumb Prophet struggling to speak,” we have a portentous
mixture of the Quack withal! Hume’s notion of the FanaticHypocrite, with such truth as it has, will apply much better
to Napoleon than it did to Cromwell, to Mahomet or the
like,—where indeed taken strictly it has hardly any truth at
all. An element of blamable ambition shows itself, from the
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first, in this man; gets the victory over him at last, and involves him and his work in ruin.
“False as a bulletin” became a proverb in Napoleon’s time.
He makes what excuse he could for it: that it was necessary to
mislead the enemy, to keep up his own men’s courage, and so
forth. On the whole, there are no excuses. A man in no case
has liberty to tell lies. It had been, in the long-run, better for
Napoleon too if he had not told any. In fact, if a man have
any purpose reaching beyond the hour and day, meant to be
and did base himself upon fact, so long as he had any basis.
He has an instinct of Nature better than his culture was. His
savans, Bourrienne tells us, in that voyage to Egypt were one
evening busily occupied arguing that there could be no God.
They had proved it, to their satisfaction, by all manner of
logic. Napoleon looking up into the stars, answers, “Very ingenious, Messieurs: but who made all that?” The Atheistic
logic runs off from him like water; the great Fact stares him
in the face: “Who made all that?” So too in Practice: he, as
found extant next day, what good can it ever be to promulgate lies? The lies are found out; ruinous penalty is exacted
for them. No man will believe the liar next time even when
he speaks truth, when it is of the last importance that he be
believed. The old cry of wolf!—A Lie is no-thing; you cannot of nothing make something; you make nothing at last,
and lose your labor into the bargain.
Yet Napoleon had a sincerity: we are to distinguish between
what is superficial and what is fundamental in insincerity.
Across these outer manoeuverings and quackeries of his, which
were many and most blamable, let us discern withal that the
man had a certain instinctive ineradicable feeling for reality;
every man that can be great, or have victory in this world,
sees, through all entanglements, the practical heart of the
matter; drives straight towards that. When the steward of his
Tuileries Palace was exhibiting the new upholstery, with praises,
and demonstration how glorious it was, and how cheap withal,
Napoleon, making little answer, asked for a pair of scissors,
clips one of the gold tassels from a window-curtain, put it in
his pocket, and walked on. Some days afterwards, he produced it at the right moment, to the horror of his upholstery
functionary; it was not gold but tinsel! In St. Helena, it is
notable how he still, to his last days, insists on the practical,
the real. “Why talk and complain; above all, why quarrel with
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one another? There is no result in it; it comes to nothing that
one can do. Say nothing, if one can do nothing!” He speaks
often so, to his poor discontented followers; he is like a piece
of silent strength in the middle of their morbid querulousness there.
And accordingly was there not what we can call a faith in
him, genuine so far as it went? That this new enormous Democracy asserting itself here in the French Revolution is an
unsuppressible Fact, which the whole world, with its old forces
presses the deepest contempt for persons in authority that
they do not restrain this rabble. On the Tenth of August he
wonders why there is no man to command these poor Swiss;
they would conquer if there were. Such a faith in Democracy,
yet hatred of anarchy, it is that carries Napoleon through all
his great work. Through his brilliant Italian Campaigns, onwards to the Peace of Leoben, one would say, his inspiration
is: “Triumph to the French Revolution; assertion of it against
these Austrian Simulacra that pretend to call it a Simulacrum!”
and institutions, cannot put down; this was a true insight of
his, and took his conscience and enthusiasm along with it,—
a faith. And did he not interpret the dim purport of it well?
“La carriere ouverte aux talens, The implements to him who
can handle them:” this actually is the truth, and even the whole
truth; it includes whatever the French Revolution or any Revolution, could mean. Napoleon, in his first period, was a true
Democrat. And yet by the nature of him, fostered too by his
military trade, he knew that Democracy, if it were a true thing
at all, could not be an anarchy: the man had a heart-hatred for
anarchy. On that Twentieth of June (1792), Bourrienne and
he sat in a coffee-house, as the mob rolled by: Napoleon ex-
Withal, however, he feels, and has a right to feel, how necessary a strong Authority is; how the Revolution cannot prosper or last without such. To bridle in that great devouring,
self-devouring French Revolution; to tame it, so that its intrinsic purpose can be made good, that it may become organic, and be able to live among other organisms and formed
things, not as a wasting destruction alone: is not this still what
he partly aimed at, as the true purport of his life; nay what he
actually managed to do? Through Wagrams, Austerlitzes; triumph after triumph,—he triumphed so far. There was an eye
to see in this man, a soul to dare and do. He rose naturally to
be the King. All men saw that he was such. The common
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soldiers used to say on the march: “These babbling Avocats,
up at Paris; all talk and no work! What wonder it runs all
wrong? We shall have to go and put our Petit Caporal there!”
They went, and put him there; they and France at large. Chiefconsulship, Emperorship, victory over Europe;—till the poor
Lieutenant of La Fere, not unnaturally, might seem to himself the greatest of all men that had been in the world for
some ages.
But at this point, I think, the fatal charlatan-element got
paltry patchwork of theatrical paper-mantles, tinsel and mummery, had this man wrapt his own great reality in, thinking to
make it more real thereby! His hollow Pope’s-Concordat, pretending to be a re-establishment of Catholicism, felt by himself to be the method of extirpating it, “la vaccine de la religion:” his ceremonial Coronations, consecrations by the old
Italian Chimera in Notre-Dame,—”wanting nothing to complete the pomp of it,” as Augereau said, “nothing but the halfmillion of men who had died to put an end to all that”!
the upper hand. He apostatized from his old faith in Facts,
took to believing in Semblances; strove to connect himself
with Austrian Dynasties, Popedoms, with the old false
Feudalities which he once saw clearly to be false;—considered that he would found “his Dynasty” and so forth; that the
enormous French Revolution meant only that! The man was
“given up to strong delusion, that he should believe a lie;” a
fearful but most sure thing. He did not know true from false
now when he looked at them,—the fearfulest penalty a man
pays for yielding to untruth of heart. Self and false ambition
had now become his god: self-deception once yielded to, all
other deceptions follow naturally more and more. What a
Cromwell’s Inauguration was by the Sword and Bible; what
we must call a genuinely true one. Sword and Bible were borne
before him, without any chimera: were not these the real
emblems of Puritanism; its true decoration and insignia? It
had used them both in a very real manner, and pretended to
stand by them now! But this poor Napoleon mistook: he
believed too much in the Dupability of men; saw no fact
deeper in man than Hunger and this! He was mistaken. Like
a man that should build upon cloud; his house and he fall
down in confused wreck, and depart out of the world.
Alas, in all of us this charlatan-element exists; and might be
developed, were the temptation strong enough. “Lead us not
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into temptation”! But it is fatal, I say, that it be developed.
The thing into which it enters as a cognizable ingredient is
doomed to be altogether transitory; and, however huge it may
look, is in itself small. Napoleon’s working, accordingly, what
was it with all the noise it made? A flash as of gunpowder
wide-spread; a blazing-up as of dry heath. For an hour the
whole Universe seems wrapt in smoke and flame; but only
for an hour. It goes out: the Universe with its old mountains
and streams, its stars above and kind soil beneath, is still there.
thought of it,—waiting their day! Which day came: Germany
rose round him.—What Napoleon did will in the long-run
amount to what he did justly; what Nature with her laws will
sanction. To what of reality was in him; to that and nothing
more. The rest was all smoke and waste. La carriere ouverte
aux talens: that great true Message, which has yet to articulate
and fulfil itself everywhere, he left in a most inarticulate state.
He was a great ebauche, a rude-draught never completed; as
indeed what great man is other? Left in too rude a state, alas!
The Duke of Weimar told his friends always, To be of courage; this Napoleonism was unjust, a falsehood, and could not
last. It is true doctrine. The heavier this Napoleon trampled
on the world, holding it tyrannously down, the fiercer would
the world’s recoil against him be, one day. Injustice pays itself
with frightful compound-interest. I am not sure but he had
better have lost his best park of artillery, or had his best regiment drowned in the sea, than shot that poor German Bookseller, Palm! It was a palpable tyrannous murderous injustice,
which no man, let him paint an inch thick, could make out
to be other. It burnt deep into the hearts of men, it and the
like of it; suppressed fire flashed in the eyes of men, as they
His notions of the world, as he expresses them there at St.
Helena, are almost tragical to consider. He seems to feel the
most unaffected surprise that it has all gone so; that he is
flung out on the rock here, and the World is still moving on
its axis. France is great, and all-great: and at bottom, he is
France. England itself, he says, is by Nature only an appendage of France; “another Isle of Oleron to France.” So it was by
Nature, by Napoleon-Nature; and yet look how in fact—
HERE AM I! He cannot understand it: inconceivable that
the reality has not corresponded to his program of it; that
France was not all-great, that he was not France. “Strong delusion,” that he should believe the thing to be which is not!
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The compact, clear-seeing, decisive Italian nature of him,
strong, genuine, which he once had, has enveloped itself, halfdissolved itself, in a turbid atmosphere of French fanfaronade.
The world was not disposed to be trodden down underfoot;
to be bound into masses, and built together, as he liked, for a
pedestal to France and him: the world had quite other purposes in view! Napoleon’s astonishment is extreme. But alas,
what help now? He had gone that way of his; and Nature also
had gone her way. Having once parted with Reality, he tumbles
With six months, instead of six days, we might have done
better. I promised to break ground on it; I know not whether
I have even managed to do that. I have had to tear it up in the
rudest manner in order to get into it at all. Often enough,
with these abrupt utterances thrown out isolated, unexplained,
has your tolerance been put to the trial. Tolerance, patient
candor, all-hoping favor and kindness, which I will not speak
of at present. The accomplished and distinguished, the beautiful, the wise, something of what is best in England, have
helpless in Vacuity; no rescue for him. He had to sink there,
mournfully as man seldom did; and break his great heart, and
die,—this poor Napoleon: a great implement too soon wasted,
till it was useless: our last Great Man!
Our last, in a double sense. For here finally these wide
roamings of ours through so many times and places, in search
and study of Heroes, are to terminate. I am sorry for it: there
was pleasure for me in this business, if also much pain. It is a
great subject, and a most grave and wide one, this which, not
to be too grave about it, I have named Hero-worship. It enters
deeply, as I think, into the secret of Mankind’s ways and vitalest
interests in this world, and is well worth explaining at present.
listened patiently to my rude words. With many feelings, I
heartily thank you all; and say, Good be with you all!
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Index
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Carlyle page,
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[May 12, 1840.]LECTURE III.THE HERO AS POET.
DANTE 68
[May 15, 1840.]LECTURE IV.THE HERO AS PRIEST.
LUTH 99
[May 19, 1840.]LECTURE V.THE HERO AS MAN OF
LETTER 131
[May 22, 1840.]LECTURE VI.THE HERO AS KING.
CROMWE 165
[May 5, 1840.]LECTURE ITHE HERO AS DIVINITY.
ODIN. 4
[May 8, 1840.]LECTURE II.THE HERO AS PROPHET.
MAHO 38
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